10 07 2003
Well, following only one day after the AFI concert, Simone and I went to see Foo Fighters at The International Centre… literally across the street from Pearson Int’l Airport.
The venue looks like this giant airplane hangar, and had great sound… I think. We most of the concert in good position around the equilateral triangle that provides best sound fidelity. Unfortunately, the alcohol service was beyond pathetic. Simone and I tried to get drinks, but after five minutes, we hadn’t moved even two feet into the bar-crowd, six-foot deep.
Because it was an all-ages show, they had two areas sectioned off for drinking, with one entrance and one exit each. When we gave up trying to get six-dollar drinks, we squeezed our way back the way we came in. We were told that it was “Entrance Only”. No one was trying to get in at the time, but rules are rules to a neanderthal. He pointed far away and told us that we would have to ‘go out there’. I told him it that it was too crowded… as he started to turn away I asked him to ’stop letting so many fucking people in’. No response. Dick.
When the Foo’s went on, Dave Grohl screamed for the first 15 minutes, then continued to sing for the next hour with only periodic breaks to rest his voice. This guy has an insane endurance. The whole concert was being taped for DVD distribution, and it was definitely a worthy show.
After dropping off Simone, I was ready to get a good sleep. I hadn’t had many long sleeps over the weekend, and two concerts in two nights takes a lot out of a person.
As I’m watching some TV before going to bed, I see - out of the corner of my eye - some thing dark, blurry and fast move from my desk to under the sofa.
Not entirely sure what I saw (if anything… it was late and dark in my Living room), I grabbed a rolled up newspaper in the hopes that it was something squishable. I rest my hand on one arm of the sofa… timed my breathing… and threw the sofa, pivoting on the other side. Even though it moved too fast to see exactly what it was, I knew from the long tail that it was a mouse. Just what I need at 1:00 AM on a weeknight.
Making my second trip out to the 24 hr. Dominion supermarket, I picked up some fancy, brand-name mouse traps. I loaded them up with peanut butter, put one where I first saw the bugger and another near the sofa.
OK, I’m not afraid of mice. So screw you if you’re thinking I should just chase after it. Well, I was still startled by seeing it, it’s much, much faster than me, and I’m very tired…
…that’s just the problem. My bed is a futon… close to the ground, so I couldn’t possibly go to sleep on it while that thing is still roaming around. So I sat on my Kitchen stool and waited. I watched Classic Star Trek, Star Trek: DS9 and an X-Files episode. The last was an episode about this creature that crawls up inside its victims… not the kind of thing you want to watch when you’ve got a small critter in your house. I was going to turn to another station, but I realized that I needed closure on this story and watched the episode through to the end.
Around 4:00, I couldn’t stand it any more and crouched up on my sofa… not a comfortable sleep.
The last I saw of the little fucker was running into my hall closet. There’s an access door in there in order to get to the pipes, so I figure that’s how it got in/out. I placed a trap where I saw him first, and where I saw him last. This whole thing happened late, late Monday night (or early Tuesday morning… depending on your view of things).
On Tuesday afternoon, I talked to Martin… the tenant who rents the main level of the house… who said that he’s seen a mouse as well, caught it and flushed it down the toilet. I was hoping that he would tell me that it was that day, but to my dispair it was last Friday when those events transpired. What I had here was a completely new mouse.
I searched every nook and cranny, where I had seen the mouse and where I thought it might go, and there was no gnawing and no poop. Obviously he was a new tenant. My biggest concern was that the first time I saw it was running out from behind my computer. If that little fucker damages any of my computer cables, then it turns personal - and I find the most painful, slowest way of killing it.
The *snap* from down the hall while I was on the sofa happened late last night (Wednesday).
Ding! Dong!
The mouse is dead!
Which ol’ mouse?
That fuckin’ mouse!
Ding! Dong! That fucking mouse is dead!
So now that I’ve defended my home from this onslaught, I’m going to reset the trap tonight, put it back in the closet where I caught the fucker, and let it work as an ongoing perimeter defence for subsequent attacks…
…I think I might play too much Command & Conquer.
