Honestly, I would be so okay with having a nice little mouse friend who lived in my dorm. But this guy? This guy isn’t my friend. At all.

It all started around 2:30 am last Wednesday when I woke up to a crinkling noise coming from my roommate Olivia’s side of the room in our Sulzberger Hall dorm. Assuming she was just up having a snack or something, I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. After about five minutes of this crinkling noise keeping me awake, I heard Olivia get up and say, “Mia? Do you also hear that?” 

I don’t think I’ve ever sat up quicker in my life. We spent a few minutes looking around the room for the source of the noise, but it seemed to stop right as we got up to search for it. After concluding that it probably was just a piece of plastic stuck in our fan or something, we decided to go back to sleep. That is, until I decided to check one more place: the bottom drawer of my rolling cart where I was keeping a comically large bag of Trader Joe’s popcorn. Fast forward about 15 seconds, and there’s a little brown mouse jumping out of the drawer at me and scurrying off to God knows where in our dorm.

We spent about two hours panic-texting my parents and deliberating over whether or not we should sleep in the lounge before deciding we were brave enough to go back to sleep. The mouse, Barney, as we are now calling him, stayed hidden for the rest of the night; we thought we were safe. We were disappointed, though, when the work order person came, left one trap directly in front of my dresser (???), and a bright orange note on the outside of our door detailing to all of Sulz eight that we are dirty, gross pest girls.

Unfortunately for us, the singular trap was no match for Barney; he came back and is now even braver than before. Just a few nights ago, we woke up to him chewing on the packaging of my CLOROX WIPES. Then, he somehow made his way up to the top drawer, where he tore into a closed bag of Cheez-Its. For whatever reason, he loves the inside of my cart, so we threw everything inside away and are on a strict no food whatsoever in the dorm cleanse. He came back several times that night, and was even up chewing on stuff the next morning at like 10 am.

I’m trying to sympathize with the guy, I really am. I know he’s just looking for food and warmth, but it can’t be in our dorm. I can’t keep living in fear every time I go to put on my shoes or open a drawer, and he can’t keep waking us up several times a night gnawing on whatever he’s managed to get his freaky little hands on this time. It just isn’t sustainable. So, little mouse, little Barney, if for some reason you’ve gained literacy and internet access and are a Bwog reader, this is my formal request for you to please leave us alone. We don’t want you, we don’t like you, please go away and start a new life for yourself away from us. You are not welcome here. But also, please don’t let us see you on your way out because we are very scared of you.

Header Illustration via Simone Snow

Pest Control Tag via Author