7th blog post - Mouse in our apartment - Dina

This weekend while I was studying for my biology test I had a very traumatic experience. It was definitely quite a “college” experience. My roommate and I were sitting at our dining table doing homework. I was sitting across from her facing the windows and she was facing our main door. It was quiet for about an hour until she randomly shrieked. I was so confused. She jumped up on her chair and told me she saw a mouse. So, being as dramatic as I am, I jumped up on my chair screaming at the top of my lungs. One of my biggest fears is rodents, which is funny since most are more scared of humans than humans are of them. However, I am definitely more scared of them than I should be. When I heard there was a mouse so many thoughts went through my mind. I know that they carry a lot of diseases since my mom always talks about those diseases. Also, for biology, I was just reading about toxoplasmosis. Rats are the intermediate hosts of this disease. Although rats and mice aren’t the same, I associated the mice with toxoplasmosis. I began to worry about if this mouse has been living here for a long time. I was concerned whether or not the mouse touched any of our food or places that we sit and lay on. Luckily, one of our guy friends was over at the apartment at the time. He was very brave, I would’ve never done what he did, which wasn’t too much but more than what I would do. He went to where my roommate saw the mouse. The mouse was hiding in a corner of our apartment where we keep our suitcases. One by one, our friend removed the suitcases away from the corner. Then, I saw the mouse. It was a tiny little brown mouse. It was cute, but I was still disgusted. It quickly ran under the fridge. It stayed under the fridge for a while because we couldn’t get it out. After we all went back to our homework, I saw it run under the stove. We peaked under the stove, but we couldn’t see it anymore. At this point, my roommates and I didn’t know what to do. Our RA was gone for the weekend and our parents were here to “save” us. We couldn’t rely on our parents to handle the situation because we're growing up. It’s our responsibility because it is our “house”. We emailed our RA who told us to call the facilities management. They told us they would send pest control. As soon as we heard that we were relieved, but then we were told that they wouldn’t be able to come until the next morning. This was not relieving to hear. Thinking about sleeping with a mouse crawling around is terrifying. So, to try to fix the situation, we blocked off the kitchen. The next morning, the pest control guy came, but he couldn’t find the mouse. He blocked off any holes he found and set mouse traps. I guess now we will just wait and see.