Mouse in the Kitchen

Somewhere in the kitchen at 11:30 at night: eeeeep squeak squeak

Me: I know that sound.

Me, to roommate’s cat: Beauregard. Kill.

Beauregard: rrrrow?

Me: FULFILL YOUR DESTINY AND TAKE THE LIFE OF THIS HOME INTRUDER

Beauregard: Shut up motherfucker and fill my food dish

Me: God dammit

So I go over to the kitchen where the squeaking is still happening. It’s unusual that a mouse would squeak so much unprovoked, so maybe it’s trapped somewhere.

I will kill it.

I get down on the floor. No mouse. I open all the cabinets. No mouse, no mouse turds. I look in the glue trap I put out for any stray roaches. No mouse. No roaches either, so that’s nice.

This continues for fifteen minutes. It’s weird, because Beauregard is the most ruthless mouse-torturer I’ve ever met. I have video proof of this. So why isn’t he jumping at the opportunity to leave a tiny mouse head somewhere I can step on it barefoot at 3 in the morning like he usually does?

I’ve put my ear to every surface, searched every crevice, and not only is there no mouse, but there is no evidence of any mouse activity in the whole house.

The fucker is still squeaking. I’ve narrowed it down to the kitchen sink.

There’s a mouse in my kitchen sink.

Being the calculating, level-headed, stoic hyper-masculine MAN that I am, I turned on the faucet with the spray hose and went EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT OF MY HOUSE YOU FIEND

But there was no mouse. I probably could have figured this out without getting myself all wet by, I don’t know, looking in the almost-empty sink, but that would have been too easy.

The sink, however, was not empty. There was a travel mug in it, presumably from that same day when Roommate (or possibly Jilly, she borrows stuff from time to time) had had coffee. A travel mug that, it turns out, was not entirely closed.

See, about half an hour earlier I was doing dishes. The hot water, I assume, must have made the air expand inside the mug, and it was escaping through the slightly-open lid, forcing a tiny stream of air through the little bit of water that was still on it from earlier.

It made a squeaking sound. It’s about 1 AM now, so I think I’ll just go to bed.