U.S. Campus Life Mouse in the house By Masako Yamada	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
部屋にネズミが出現 部屋にネズミが出現雅子さんは以前から、アパートに発生する小さなガに悩まされていました。でも、小さな虫なら何とか対処できます。ところが、最近、アパートのほかの住民が、ときたまネズミを目撃するようになりました。そしてある日、雅子さんの部屋の中で、生活に影響を及ぼすような大変な出来事が…。

I thought we had it bad enough when we were battling moths in our cupboards. They've come and gone and come back again, but it seems we've gotten used to the little insects. We know they are still there, but we only see them once in a while. They are very small, and in the end, they're essentially harmless. They don't imply the same lack of hygiene that roaches do, and thankfully, we've never had problems with roaches.

But even roaches are not a problem compared to rodents. Unfortunately, it seems that our apartment is not immune to an occasional visit from a mouse. I've lived in this apartment for four years now and every year or so, one of my roommates would tell me that he or she saw a mouse. I always brushed it off in the past.

However, recently, the problem seems to have gotten worse. Indeed, it has started to affect my life directly. About a month ago, two of my roommates told me that they saw a mouse in the kitchen. I didn't think much of it. I figured that we wouldn't see any more mice for a while.

A week or so later, I noticed that my room smelled a bit like garbage. I hadn't been in my room for several days and I figured the smell filled my room because the garbage collection site for our apartment is located right outside my window, and it was the day for the garbage trucks to pick up the trash. It was a very hot day, and it didn't surprise me that the garbage stunk. I closed my window to shut out the smell of the garbage and I burned some scented candles to help clear out the air.

The following day, the smell seemed even worse, so I decided to look around my room to see what could be the cause of the awful stench. I peeked behind one of the cupboards and finally saw what everybody else had been talking about: there was a mouse there, a dead mouse.

I immediately left the room and yelled out to my roommates. One of the subletters, Julio, came into my room and confirmed that the object behind my cupboard was, indeed, a mouse. However, he refused to touch the mouse. Both he and I were utterly paralyzed. Julio's girlfriend, Elena, then appeared on the scene. Although she is a beautiful and sophisticated TV producer, she is a country girl at heart, and she immediately took control of the situation.

She entered my room with a stick and poked at the dead mouse. She came out and told us (we didn't even want to hear) that the mouse was VERY dead. It was already severely decomposed. This did not faze her. She put on some gloves, picked up the mouse and put it in a trash bag. I took the trash bag and immediately brought it to the garbage collection site outside. From that point on, Elena was my hero. She and Julio have been together for almost 10 years, so he didn't seem so surprised by her performance.

This incident jolted me into action, and I went to the hardware store to buy rodent repellent. I didn't want to buy poison, since that would only produce dead mice that would later need to be disposed of (or worse, the mice could get stuck in some location we could smell, but couldn't reach). Elena told me that she would be willing to dispose of any dead mice, but I didn't like the idea of just killing them. Therefore, I bought two plug-in repellents that emit ultrasound waves that humans cannot hear. Apparently, the sound drives mice crazy, and it turns out that it works for insects, too.

I don't know if it's my imagination, but it seems that the mice have started to avoid the kitchen. Nobody has reported seeing a mouse there for a while. However, I suspect that they have merely been driven to another section of the apartment, since one of my roommates told me that she saw a mouse in a room about a week ago, and yesterday, I saw one in the living room. I've now gotten a better plug-in repellent — one that can cover the area of the entire apartment — and it turns out it also works for insects. I'm hoping that we'll finally win the battle against pests in our apartment.

Shukan ST: Sept. 14, 2001

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