The Exterminators: Don't Mouse with Us

Several months ago one of my Facebook friends posted about their run in with mice while living in their first marital apartment. Oh the memories that conjured up. Below is a nice little write up I put in a scrapbook (way back when that was the in thing) about Tyler and my first apartment in Logan for the first year of our marriage.

Our minute apartment was one of two in the basement of an older home. In addition to the two in the basement, there was one on the main floor and one in the rafters.

The rent was $225 a month which allowed us to save a lot of money and graduate debt free. The walls were paper thin; we quickly learned to talk very quietly if we didn’t want anyone to hear us. The ceiling peaked a few inches higher than Tyler, hence there was no stretching your arms above your head. Our kitchen, living room, and bathroom were all one room with a meager accordion door to close off the bathroom.

The shower was separate from the bathroom and located in one corner of the back room. The living room was so constricted we weren’t able to even fit a couch. It was a very weird setup.

Not to mention our apartment housed the water heaters for all four apartments. Our full-size bed barely fit into our bedroom leaving no room for a dresser.

We had no closet but luckily several shelves lined part of one wall. In addition to the smallness, we had no control of our heat. You could always tell who was home upstairs by whether it was freezing or very hot. Our one life saver was the storage room we had outside our front door. If it weren’t for that I don’t where we would have put things.

With our apartment came enormous spiders free of charge. Before we realized we even had a problem with spiders, we had slept on the living room/kitchen floor to watch a movie. Had we known we were supposedly hibernating with spiders, I think we would have slept in our own bed. I captured one and took it to the USU County Extension Office only to learn they were called hobo spiders or aggressive house spiders. If they bit you, your skin would eventually start to rot away. Great! We became very careful about not leaving our clothes on the floor. One night within five hours we killed ten spiders. On more than one occasion I’d awaken to find a spider perched on the wall right by my head. It was a little nerve racking.

Furthermore, we also had a family of mice move into our storage room for a month. They ate plenty of our food and ruined a lot of items by climbing in and out of boxes. I became so paranoid that I wouldn’t go into the storage room. It was Tyler’s job to kill and haul them out. On several nights we would lie in bed and hear the trap go off and wonder how many we were going to end up killing. In all we ended up exterminating thirteen. Then in the spring, within a week’s time, three bumblebees succeeded in finding their way in to our apartment (all at different times). They seemed attracted to a glass container sitting in our window which is where all three perished. Living there absolutely made us more grateful for the luxuries in life.

As I read back on this little narrative, I wish I had taken more pictures. The few I have just don't do it justice. And again this was before the advent of digital cameras when society became very snap happy. The sign above was something we made to put in the window to the door that led to all three apartments. Our neighbors, the Grigsbys, taped The Exterminators sign after our little mouse escapade. I'm sure they heard those pesky rodents too and were quite thrilled to have us deal with their demise.