Under Attack!

There are many reasons I dislike the city. Urban pests now top that list.

You see the thing is that I really have no problem with mice. In fact, I find them to be quite adorable little creatures. When I was little I once saved a poor mouse from the jaws of death (i.e. my sister's cat) and put the little shocked thing in a box until it felt better and then set it free in the forest. Apparently such consideration to their kind was not enough to appease the mouse gods, because I am currently, at 6:15 in the morning, under seige by what seems to be a torrent of little mousy bastards, but could quite possibly be just one particularly nervy little runt.

So why am I awake at 6:15 in the morning, and not only awake but feeling compelled to sit and write out my sorrows on a computer? Because these mice are not only crawling around my room being incredibly noisy, but one actually had the audacity to crawl into my bed - forcing me, yelping in surprise and disgust, out of it. This mouse has crossed the line, I say. CROSSED THE LINE!

To make matters worse, I have had the worst sleep in the history of the world. First there's the fact that I can here the little mouse (or mice) running all around my room, crawling in my garbage can, munching on this and that, leaving me to speculate what millions of things I might find to have been nibbled on in the morning. I told myself to just ignore it and go to sleep, hoping the furry little monkey would find its way to the lovely meal of peanut butter that just happens to be situated in just what I once saved that poor mouse from long ago - the jaws of death (ie a mouse trap).

Comforted by this thought, I had nearly drifted to sleep when I began a shallow dream of two spiders crawling around on a box in my room when I realized that the dream was actually referring to something insect-like crawling on my neck, which presently started some kind of strange vibration dance. I was thus rudely jerked from my near slumber in order to shake the thing off, and watched it go crawling behind my bed as my instincts were not yet intact enough to smash it to smitherenes.

This time it was even harder to go back to sleep, because on top of the little mouse ravishing my room I now had to deal with the thought of this potential spider crawling back onto me and continuing his vibration dance, which in my sleepy state I felt sure was some crazy way of sending spider eggs into my skin from which trillions of tiny spiderbabies would be hatched at a later date. This is an example of why urban legends are dangerous things.

The ironic thing is that I have a few times slept under the stars with only a sleeping bag to protect me from the elements and been less disturbed by creepy crawlies than I have been tonight, in my bed, in a house in a huge city. That is just not fair!

I don't know when I will ever feel safe to return to my bed, but it definitely will not happen this morning. I may as well do some of the pages upon pages of readings I have to do for tomorrow.

Yawn. I hate mice.

Toronto poems

On Bathurst

On Bathurst everything is busy.
I have an apartment here, just down the road from
Shining Honest Ed’s super duper discount store.
We sit on the roof and drink beer
Watch the CN tower blink into the smog
And talk about the philosophy of sex.
We are students, after all.
What else would we do?
Our bottle collection is impressive
And we have mice.

Toronto has many interesting sites to see
A dirty man on the streetcar has steely sneaky eyes
And tells me and two strangers that his friend
Started a boat fire at Ontario Place.
“All the boats are burning”
His eyes are deadpan and we are not sure
Whether to laugh or to believe.

Just North of Ulster there is a parking meter
With a pizza crust shoved in the coin slot
Who thinks of that?