I was watching a mediocre fantasy show at 1:30 AM, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw some movement. I thought it was just a reflection or the curls of my hair, but a mouse head peeked out from under my oven. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I yelled into my empty apartment. Well, I guess it wasn’t that empty.
Having a pest issue seems to be a New York rite of passage, but I had been lucky enough to never have dealt with mammals. I thought I was crushing it. I had finally locked in the furniture layout of my shiny new one bedroom, snacking on corner store tangerines that were both cheap and sweet. I was on the cusp of realizing my hosting dreams - dinner parties, creative circles, people flitting in and out. A home. My home. A vision that held no space for a rodent.
In order to solve a problem, you must name it. So I named him Fuckface. As soon as I yelled, he darted back under the oven. I retreated to my room, shoving a towel under the door so Fuckface couldn’t crawl under and run intervals while I was sleeping. I’d deal with him later.
Within a few days, my super and his assistant came by to investigate. They wore paint-speckled jeans and had beads of sweat running down their face, the look of men who had been doing hard labor since dawn. With remarkable efficiency, they moved each of my appliances and drilled steel plates over possible entry points, muttering to each other in rapid Spanish. I offered to help but they ignored me. So I sat in my ergonomic office chair and tuned into a Zoom call about the challenges of Q2, while they lifted my fridge.
For a whole week, I didn’t see the little fucker, but I tweaked at every sound. Was it the crinkle of a paper bag? Or a microfracture in the foundation from the upstairs neighbor, who had an active but weirdly punctual sex life? Or just Fuckface being a fuckface? Maybe he had self-evicted.
Yet a few days later, while I was watching the next episode of The Wheel of Time, I saw him. Not just a glimpse this time. Fuckface sauntered out from under the oven, venturing into the open space. Like he owned the place. I ran up to him to scare him back into the dark, so I could have a moment to lay out a trap.
Glue traps are inhumane. The adhesive slowly suffocates or starves the mouse to an agonizing death. But it was the only trap I had on hand, and in the moment, I wasn’t thinking about the consequences. I guess by naming him Fuckface, I hadn’t really left myself open to empathy. I smeared some peanut butter on it and placed it near the oven.
Fuckface poked his head out. He crawled out tentatively, sniffing. Yes, yes, keep going, just a little closer, almost there you dumbass. But as he approached the edge of the trap, he turned his nose, strolling right around it. The nonchalance! The nerve! I stomped up to him again, and he scurried back under the dishwasher. I moved the glue trap so that it was directly in his travel path.
Once again, Fuckface edged out and evaded the trap. I was banking on this idiot having no neuroplasticity, but clearly he was smarter than me. We continued this Tom and Jerry routine for almost an hour. By the sixth round, I put my head in my hands and groaned out loud. “Oh my god, we’re both tired of this shit. Can you just walk into the trap already?” I swore I heard him squeak in response, as if to say: Your spirit is weak. I am the alpha. Your apartment is mine now, you cuck.
One final time, Fuckface creeped out. Defeated, I sat glumly on the couch and watched him pick up a crumb that I missed. He turned towards me and made direct eye contact. I expected arrogance in his beady eyes, but instead, I saw the spiral of fear and hunger. He clutched the crumb with his tiny paws, his body shaking as he inhaled the same air that I did. The little guy was just trying to feed himself. Could I really fault him for having the reflex to stay alive? Guilty, I shortened his name to Fred. He escaped to the dark with his loot, while I considered what to do.
“So, how are you enjoying your friends?” My mom asked on our weekly phone call.
“Which friends?”
“You know, the mice. Are you having fun with them? Say hi to them for me.” She giggled. I told her about my attempts to trap him.
“You’re trying to kill them? That’s so bad. We used to just live with them in Dadar.”
“Okay Mom, but this is not Dadar. What do you want me to do? It’s gross.”
“Yeah, fine. But you can just shoo them away.”
I did what I normally do whenever my parents remind me of my first world softness, which is to pretend like it doesn’t exist and just do the most convenient thing for me. I didn’t have the stones to use a fully humane bucket trap that kept him alive and wriggling, but at least I could use snap traps that were quick and painless.
I looked to Reddit for advice. BillZZ7777r, a “homeowner with over forty kills,” recommended using gloves to handle traps. Even the faintest human scent could repel a mouse. AFesseg advised to only use a small glob of peanut butter on each trap, just enough to attract mice without letting them freeload off the perimeter. I laid out the classic wooden traps with the cheese plates, for the vintage aesthetic. When Fred didn’t go for them, I tried the postmodern ones, plastic and optimized with concealed bait troughs.
But despite my best efforts to remove him, Fred was exceptionally good at survival. For months, he infested my apartment. Sometimes, I saw him loitering around the kitchen. Other times, I saw only his calling card - droppings here and there. Fred was literally shitting all over my communal aspirations.
I started to look into more desperate measures. I asked two friends if I could borrow their cats for like a week, but they each said that their cats were useless. There’s a service for everything in New York, so I tried to rent a snake and have it slither around my apartment for a while. I found a promising business: “fᴏʀ ᴀʟʟ ʏᴏᴜʀ sɴᴀᴋᴇ ɴᴇᴇᴅs... ᴘʜᴏᴛᴏɢʀᴀᴘʜʏ, ᴍᴜsIᴄ ᴠɪᴅᴇᴏ, ғIʟᴍɪɴɢ, ᴛʜᴇᴀᴛʀɪᴄᴀʟ ᴀɴᴅ ᴘᴀʀᴛɪᴇs. 🐍.” But my need was not listed. Besides, more animals was not the solution here.
That he kept coming and going meant that my super and I had missed sealing some hole somewhere. To figure out his entry point, I bought a home security camera for $25 that streamed 2K video directly to my phone. My friends noticed that I was less present every time we hung out.
“What are you looking at?” They asked.
“Mousecam,” I responded without looking up from my phone. When I realized that “mousecam” was not a normal response, I explained my setup. “See, that’s my stove. The cam has motion detection too. Pretty sick, right?”
They nodded sympathetically while also losing a bit of respect for me. Understandable, but I was too locked in. Every night, I combed through gigabytes of Mousecam footage, zooming and enhancing like I was the feds. But as I observed Fred’s frantic movements, I began to feel more like a reluctant parent, wondering where he was going, if had eaten today, oh man, he’s looking so skinny, while also dreaming of a life unburdened by him.
Dealing with mice was becoming most of my personality. It’s important to find community, so I considered attending PestWorld 2025, the premiere conference hosted by the National Pest Management Association. The only thing that stopped me was having to fly to Orlando. Stuck in New York watching Mousecam, I was losing the ability to engage with my own species.
“I’m a creative director. I do brand deals for MMA fighters. What about you?” asked some dude at the pregame.
“That’s cool man. I have a mouse in my apartment.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah, it really does. I’m trying to track him on Mousecam.”
“Uh, what?” He fiddled with his phone, searching for an escape route from this conversation.
“I - uh, nevermind. Anyways, do you think, like, 1,000 mice could beat up an MMA fighter?”
“I don’t know man. Why do you keep bringing up mice-related topics?”
I had almost accepted that this was just my life, that Fred was going to live here rent-free, forever. Until one night, I came home loaded off tequila to find Fred’s carcass, splayed out under the hammer of a trap. When I stumbled over to the other traps, I saw that he had swiped all the peanut butter without springing them. He probably got too cocky with that last one, eating past satisfaction. Been there, brother. I’m glad he had a nice last supper.
I still felt uneasy with the violence I had inflicted. For the first time in my adult life, I considered going to the local Jain temple to repent. But after mapping out the route, I decided I didn’t feel bad enough to take two trains and a bus to Flushing.
Fred still deserved some sort of vigil. I didn’t want to toss him in the trash, but I also didn’t want to dig a grave in New York sidewalk soil. We are a cremating culture, but I did not want to explain to the police why I was trying to burn a dead mouse. So as a compromise, I did put him in the trash, but, like, gently, in a compost bag separate from the rest of the garbage. Just for him. In his memory, I ate peanut butter straight from the jar. He would’ve loved it.
Rest in peace Fred. Sorry I killed you, but you’ve forever altered my psyche. I hope that, one day, your kind and mine can peacefully but separately coexist.
While Fred himself was a real life mouse, the character of Fred was created as a composite of four separate mice. Rest in peace Fuckface “Fred”, Bitchass (no nickname, was truly a bitchass), Motherfucker “Marcus,” and Jackass “Jignesh” (needed an ethnic name in there, long live DEI).