WAFFLE MUST DIE - PART II

So Katy and I put our heads together and tried to devise the best game plan for killing Waffle. We debated over which traps to use. Katy wanted something humane. I wanted something gruesome and painful looking.

We compromised on a trap that was gruesome, yet tastefully concealed within a small black container…so you don’t have to witness the gore (snoozesville if you ask me).

We were both pleased with ourselves when Katy brought the traps home. She set them and put them in the kitchen as I watched. “See you in hell, Waffle” I said, and then a minute later added “…from Heaven.”

I rushed out of bed the next morning, but found nothing. Nothing for a week. And then one morning, Katy called me from the hallway. “You will never believe this.”

She stood hovering over one of the traps. I joined her, and was amazed by what I saw. The lid to the concealed trap had been removed and placed about 6 or 7 inches away. The rest had been dissembled, and the food in the center was gone.

“I’m scared” I told Katy.
“Me too.” she said, as we huddled next to each other.

So that night, when I returned from work I went straight to the mouse trap section of our local grocery store (which, I might add, had quite a large selection…not a good sign). Forget this fancy pant trap shit, I thought to myself. I bought a stack of the old fashion kind. The label had a dancing cartoon mouse with X’s for eyes. It therefore had to be good.

I took the traps home, and Katy and I sat down at the kitchen table to load them. For over 40 minutes, she and I struggled to set just one. They were constructed with only three pieces. How could it be this confusing? Every time I thought I had conquered the trap, the bar would come crashing onto my thumb. Same went for Katy, who while clutching her bruised and swollen fingers, looked at me with tears in her eyes and said “We are two college educated kids. Why can’t we figure this out?”

Finally Katy figured one out, and together we set the rest and placed them around the apartment. Two in the hall closet and two in the kitchen. And yet another week went by with no capture. Katy had seen Waffle running across the kitchen counter, so we reluctantly put a trap up there. Another week or two and still nothing. I said to Katy, “I wonder if he moved out?”

“Oh yeah?” she said, leading me into the kitchen. “Then what’s THIS!?” She pointed to a small piece of mouse droppings on the counter top. What I couldn’t get was why would she let mouse shit sit on top of the counter without cleaning it up. “Are you saving this to prove to me we have a mouse?” I asked.

We decided that maybe the peanut butter was maybe not the best bait. After weeks of sitting out, it had grown hard and crusty. I crumbled up an entire cookie and sprinkled its crumbs over the trap on the counter. How could a mouse resist a cookie?

The next morning, I ran to the trap to see if my scheme had worked. The trap was empty. And by empty, I mean of everything. An entire cookie’s worth of crumbs…gone. Even the crusty peanut butter was gone. That trap was licked clean. How could that even be possible? How could Waffle get his head right in the most sensitive part of the trap and not set it off?

“Did you ever read that book about the country mice and the city mice?” Katy asked me. “Here’s the thing. We’re dealing with city mice, and frankly Chris, you and me…we’re the simple country mice.”

I had had it. I was ready to admit defeat and throw in the towel. We would have to call in professionals, or just accept Waffle as our third roommate.

Defeated, I went to bed. The comfort I had felt before Kathy had come visit had long been replaced with a sense of disgust and unease. I was sharing my apartment with disgusting, diseased animals, and there was nothing I could do about it. I awoke, and with my head hung down, I walked towards the bathroom. In route, I saw a grey lump out of the corner of my eye lying atop the counter.

A mixture of joy and repulsion filled my stomach. There was Waffle, on top of the counter, crushed under the trap's heavy arm. We had caught him. After he had licked the trap clean, he had greedily come back for more. And now he was dead. Dead and most likely burning in Hell where he belonged.

I got close to him, and starting down at his long tail, I screamed like a frighten little girl. Katy came running out of the bathroom. “Did we catch Waffle?” Together we rejoiced.

“I can’t believe we finally caught him,” I said as I opened up the closet to get out the broom to sweep the remains off the counter. As I opened the door, I screamed again. Katy poked her head into the closet “Looks like we caught Pancake as well…”

We had placed a third trap in the far back end of the closet. At this time, it was concealed, so Katy grabbed the broom and pulled it into view. As she pulled it, we saw another long tail dragging behind it.   We were running out of breakfast foods to name them after. 

We were confused as to how to feel. On one hand, we had killed three mice in one night. On the other, we had been working under the misguided conception that we had been dealing with one mouse. I think deep down, we both understood that there were more, and our slaughter had forced to face reality.

We took turns sweeping their carcasses into the trash can. As Katy swept hers, the little mouse body kept getting caught on the lip of can. Repeatable, she banged the deceased mouse hard against the plastic container, before finally getting it to go in. 

We held each other’s hands as we carried the trash bag to the street corner. We walked to the curb with a sense of accomplishment, like the victors of an epic battle. Oh, the wars not over, I'm sure. But I just hope mice think twice about sticking their nose in my apartment.
The END (?)

WAFFLE MUST DIE - PART I

I can say without hyperbole that finding an apartment in New York is the hardest thing anyone has ever had to do, ever. Finding my current apartment was an absolute unholy nightmare. To be honest, I still haven’t recovered from the experience – not enough to write about it in my blog at least. That, my friends, is a story for another day.

No, this is a much different tale. To set the scene, let me first give you a little background information. After a horrifically traumatic search, my friend Katy and I finally found an apartment we could agree on. It’s big, in a nice neighborhood, and cheap. We thought we were in Heaven…or at least Purgatory…or at least not in Hell anymore.

So together, the two of us moved into our new apartment in early September. It remained sparse, however…mostly because I had volunteered to furnish it, and well frankly, I suck. It was hard to feel comfortable in a place that’s only seating consisted of a broken recliner, and as a result, I shied away from inviting friends to come visit me.

My friend Kathy came in town however, and was excited to come see my new place. How could I say no to Kathy? When Kathy asks you if she can come over, you say yes dammit. So I invited her and her fiancé John to dinner, and in a raging panic, I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom. Worried that word my get out about how I live in squalor, I enlisted the help of Katy. As I turned a broken stool into a decorative end table, Katy recovered two kitchen chairs with an old curtain. We then split up and scrubbed down every square inch till the stench of bleach brought tears to our eyes. By the end, the place looked better than it ever had. Katy and I admired our work, and for the first time, I felt like I was home.

Kathy and John’s visit only affirmed my sense of comfort. Despite the lack of seating, they both complimented the apartment. I was both relieved and excited. Maybe my apartment wasn’t a shit hole after all.

Wrong.

I saw my friends out, and then ran back to tell Katy all the great things they had said about our apartment. “WE FOOLED THEM INTO THINKING WE LIVE LIKE ADULTS!” I started to shout. But as I opened the door, I came upon a bazaar scene that stopped me dead in my tracks. Katy, in her pajamas, stood atop one of her newly refinished curtain chairs, hoisting a cardboard box above her head. I stood in the doorway, the door still open behind me, and she turned and stared at me. Her eyes were big, and for a long moment, we just stared at each other.

I waited for an explanation, and when one didn’t come, I finally asked “Um, what the fuck are you doing?”

There was another pause...with us just staring at each other. And then finally, Katy gathered herself and said in a low whisper:

“Mouse.”

“Fucking A!” I shouted. I hate mice. I hate mice more than I hate the Olsen Twins. They disgust me, with their beady eyes and long tails. I hate them. I fucking hate them.

“I saw him run into the kitchen out of the corner of my eye. I think he went under the stove," she told me as I helped her off the chair.

“What are you doing with the box?” I asked.

“Well, I was going to throw on top of him and trap him in it,” she told me. I didn’t need to tell her she was a giant idiot (although I may have anyway, I don’t quite remember). She pretty much figured it out before she could complete her explanation, and without a breath she tacked on “I DON'T KNOW, I WAS PANICKED!”

Silence fell between the two of us. We looked at the ground, and then at eachother.

“Can we name him?” I asked.

“NO YOU CAN’T NAME THE DAMN MOUSE! WE HAVE TO KILL HIM! ARE YOU INSANE?”

Silence, again. After a moment, Katy looked at the stove, and then back at me.

“How about Waffle?”
to be continued…

SO WHAT DO YOU DO?

I hate meeting new people. Most of you know this about me. When put into social settings, you can usually find me in the corner next to the beer with my arms folded over my chest, and what many strangers have called "a grumpy looking face.” I seriously have yet to go to a bar without someone coming over to me and asking “what’s it going to take to get you to smile?” or the slightly less flattering “what the hell is your problem?”

Why the awkwardness? I’m not very good at making small talk. When meeting new people in college, it was always “so…what’s your major?” I enjoyed talking about my major as much as I enjoyed listening to people talk about theirs. I looked forward to graduation when I could put this behind me, but found that this question was only replaced with “so…what do you do?”

“What do you do?” What kind of bullshit question is that anyway? I do a lot of shit. I laugh at hobos. I eat breath mints I find on the floor. I snack on bacon bits as if they were potatoes chips. I watch Forensic Files reruns every night at 11. As for what I do for a living…well, that’s a little more complicated, and I don’t see why I should have to explain every time I meet somebody new.

When people ask you “so what do you do?” they’re looking for a one to two word summation, tops. They don’t really care about what you do, it’s just a formality. It’s the same as asking someone how they’re doing. You don’t want their life story. You want “fine” or maybe even an “alright?” That’s it. Anything more is unwelcomed. Same goes when you ask someone what they do. You want a quick answer, like “fireman,” or “ventriloquist,” or “child pornographer.”

When I first started working at my new job, I didn’t know how to sum up what I did into a concise answer. Time and time again, I would watch as people eyes glazed over in the middle of my explanation. “Well, it’s complicated” I would warn. “Change the subject now” was what I was really trying to say. I would begin my rant as if reading from a script…”I work at an agency that represents hair and makeup artists, set designers, and wardrobe stylists….” I hated myself for saying it, but frankly, they asked for it. I had to give a long, drawn out speech. I didn’t know what else to say! What was I suppose to tell them? - “I don’t want to talk about it." They had backed me into a corner, and force me to be that guy that no one likes – the guy who talks about his job as if others might care. It disgusted me, and I could tell it disgusted others just listening to it. Most of the time, people would either start talking to someone else as soon as I had finished, or they would completely misunderstand what I said. “So, you’re a makeup artist?”

I told my aunt Shelia about my problem, and she told me she always felt the same way. “I tell people I’m a professional juggler,” she told me. “When I first met your uncle, I knew he was the man for me when he asked ‘Have you ever tired using live chickens in your act?’”

So following my aunt Shelia’s lead, I reinvented myself with every conversation. Sometimes I was a subway driver. Sometimes I was a pet store owner. But mostly, the best I could come up with was “Uh….juggler….” I had to stop though. The guilt was becoming too much, not only for stealing my aunts line, but for butchering as badly as I did. My delivery, most often jumbled by alcohol, came out mangled and deformed…something like “Juggler…chickens…alive….use….me?”

So, after struggling with lying, I decided honesty was the best policy. People asked me what I did, I was straight up about it. “I answer the phones, clean out the fridge, and make copies of really tiny receipts taped to big pieces of paper.” The reaction I got was amazing. “ME TOO!” they would shout. A small congregation of no-bodies would form around me. “Don’t you hate it when papers get clogged into the copier?” They would ask. “What’s the deal with powdered toner?”

Some time, well after I had come to terms with my inability to sum up my occupation into an acceptable three word answer, I was asked to post a job listing for an intern. I asked the girl next to me “What do you think a good title for the ad should be?” She responded “How ‘bout ‘Artist Management Agency seeks intern’”

And there it was. Artist Management Agency. Perhaps I could converse like a normal person after all. Although it's doubtful. I’ve found that conversations about anything other than ink cartridges and recycled paper bore me.