Oh yuck

I'm a huge wimp when it comes to dead animals. I shudder every time I see a dead squirrel or bird, and removing dead fish from an aquarium turns my stomach. Even cleaning up after I smush a spider requires me to steel my insides, give myself a pep talk, and wipe it up without looking too much. So when I went to do my laundry this afternoon and opened the basement door, only to see a limp tail and furry body presumably belonging to a rather large mouse sticking out from a trap, I promptly shut the door and grimaced.

Now what?!

To do laundry in my building actually requires walking through several adjoining basements. The first is the boiler room, and about ten mousetraps line the walls. I've never seen them "occupied," and I always check, both to reassure myself that there are no mice to worry about, and to beware of my toes. The second and third basements are just your average unfinished storage spaces.

Today, though, the trap by the door had caught its prey. I'm grateful that it did because I can only imagine how badly I'll shriek when the day comes that I see a mouse in my house. But the thought of walking past that mouse (and others? did the other traps catch spring mice, too?) six times over the course of the next two hours defeated me. I couldn't do it. I couldn't drag my heavy laundry bag through the narrow door without coming close to touching the mouse tail. I would have to look at it, too, in order to avoid it. So ... I'm not doing laundry today. I'm waiting for someone else (the maintenance man) to deal with that problem.

And meanwhile, I'm grateful that I live above the boiler room part of the basement so that my chances of ever seeing a furry vertebrate run through my apartment are pretty close to zero.