Romeo & Juliet

After four enjoyable days on the Cape, Matt and I returned to the hot apartment in the city on a Sunday night. We threw our luggage down in the kitchen, checked our email and settled in. However, as I was going about my regular business settling back in, I noticed an odd smell every time I walked through the living room.

The first time I passed through, I thought it was just my imagination. I wrinkled my nose and walked into the bedroom. The smell disappeared. The second time I walked through the living room I realized the smell was not my imagination but couldn't figure out what the heck it was. I thought, "Did Matt leave a rotting plate of food in here? Is that rotting meat?"

The third time I walked through the living room it dawned on me that the scent I was smelling was the smell of death, the smell of rotting flesh and fur. The fact that the apartment is not air-conditioned did not help. I slowly turned toward our living room glue trap.

Spread across the trap was not one but two mice. I looked away and cringed in horror. I couldn't look again. It was a scene of twisted carnage and I almost threw up.

Immediately, I screamed for Matt and begged him to get the trap out of the apartment so that my jello legs could return to solid-form.

There was a bit of an argument as to why he should have to remove the mice instead of me. I promised to buy him dinner and that was that.

Matt returned from his trip to the dumpster and said that the mice seemed to have died dramatically with their noses touching in what looked like an eternal kiss.

First I barfed in my mind.

Then I pictured the scene in Romeo and Juliet where Juliet takes poison to fake her death, falls asleep, Romeo sees her, thinks she's dead, he takes poison, she wakes up, stabs herself, he wakes up, stabs himself and voila, you have the same tragic scene as the one on the glue trap.

Although things ended tragically for the little star-crossed mouse lovers, I was more than relieved to know we had finally caught the mouse that had tormented us for so long. What worried me is that he had a little friend. I did not like the idea that our apartment mouse was just one of many, but, it became quite apparent after Romeo & Juliet met their fate on a glue trap, that they left behind an extended family to torment us further.