The Legend of Limpy

What up? Mind if I poop?

Warning: if you love mice, this entry may not be for you!

Hellloo! Internet!  Been a few days.  Been thinking about mice.  And my encounters with the little critters.  For instance!  The wife's aunt's cottage.  We were up there one summer and the place was INFESTED with mice.  You would see (and hear!) them running across the floor all the time.  And their little toxic poopoos were everywhere.  We head to the local store and buy the mouse traps they have...the old style wooden ones, with the wire snapper.  We set them up.  Smear peanut butter on the trigger.  We're set. Go to bed.  Wake up the next day and check the traps.  No PB, no mouse.  Little effers.  Off to Riverton to get more effective soltion.  We pick up these plastic traps.  They look less lethal than the wire and wood ones, but let's give them a try.  Go back to the cabin and set them up.  Not five minutes later..."snap!" Not five minutes after that..."snap!" And so on, and so on and so on! It's a mouse massacre!

Quick aside....I remember talking to my dad once about mice and he told me a story about his time at the University of New Brunswick (where he met my mom!).  Second year.  He moved out of Residence into a house with a bunch of his buds. 

Sub aside! One of my dad's buds at UNB was the kid of the guy who owned the Moosehead brewery.  I was telling my dad another time about how I really liked Moosehead , but I felt like I just couldn't trust that any given bottle wouldn't be skunky.  And my dad says "that's funny, we said the same thing to our buddy.  Then one day this truck pulls up. A Moosehead truck! Full of Moosehead!"  The dude had told his dad and his dad sent a full truck to try to convince them to come over to Moosehead's side.  Man, how sweet would that be. Although what if it was all skunky? That would be like that twilight zone episode were the guy is the last guy on earth and has nothing to do, but then finds a library...and then steps on his glasses! Noooo! Cruel irony! Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!

But JJ still makes it his practice not to drink any beer that's not in a brown bottle.  Heinie? Sorry.  Corona?  Why do you think they give you a lime?  Cut. The. Skunkiness. Not for this cowdude.

Back to first aside! My dad is living in this house with his buds...and what shows up?...Yep, mice.  Their place is just loaded with mice.  They buy this mouse poison.  The selling point of the poison?  "When the mouse eats the poison they will go away and die and you will never see them again!" Well, for the next three weeks, they couldn't go anywhere in the house without coming across a decomposing mouse corpse.  Still makes me laugh to think of it. Not that I think killing animals is funny or anything. Just the thought of coming across these dead mice....I dunno.

Not the mouse trap we used.



Anyways, back to the cottage.  More and more mice taken down.  (we nicknamed it the "Mouse Lei Massacre" - no we didn't)  Then...we are sitting one evening and hear..."snap!"...Oh! Another one taken down...but then...clang...clang...shoooka shooka...clang....shooka...  It's still alive.  And it's dragged itself behind this stove...where we can't reach it!  So what do we do? We go to bed.  (Might be going to hell for that one.) We get up in the morning.  Probably dead by now, right!?

Clang...clang...shooka...shooka.  Still alive!  Eventually it emerges close enough for me to grab.  I do the right thing.  Take the trap to the back door and fling the mouse into the woods.  Heroism!

Anyways.  All that talk above was really to tell you this story.  The Legend of Limpy.  Which isn't my story.  But I like it.  A friend of JJ's.  Lets call him CJ.  Lived at the Roslyn, an apartment block in the part of Winnipeg called  "Osborne Village".  Beautiful character building.  Great apartment.  But he got mice.  So what did he get to combat?  Mousepaper.  Like fly paper...but for mice.  You peel off the cover and there's super sticky gluey paper underneath.  He lays them all over the apartment.  That evening, around supper time, while watching the tube, he hears a scrabbling in the bathroom.  He looks inside and lo and behold, he's got a mouse on the mouse paper.  All four paws stuck to the paper.  But it's still very much alive.  Now what?  He hadn't thought that far ahead.  So he picks up the mouse paper.  And he slowly folds it together....and puts it in the plastic shopping bag he is using as his garbage bag, hanging off a door knob in his kitchen...then he goes back to watch more tube. 

A couple of hours later...he's ready for bed.  Goes to the kitchen.  Looks inside the grocery bag inside the mouse paper....

The mouse is gone.  No longer on the mousepaper. 

But still attached to the paper?  One, two, three, four tiny mouse feet.  The mouse had separated itself from its feet in order to escape its plastic tomb.  Thorough search of the kitchen...no footless mouse. Probably dead anyways.  After all, it has no feet!  End of story! What else to do but go to bed?

I haaaaaveee noooo feeeetttt!!!

Hops into bed.  Fading away...."shoooka shoook shoooka shoooka...."  "Hello? Is somebody there?" "Shoooka shoook shoooka shoooka...." Oh my god! It's Limpy! He's coming for me!

Then, scrawled on the wall in blood? "I know what you did!" And we never saw CJ again.

Ok, we did, he was fine. And the mouse didn't write anything on the wall.  But it was still pretty freaky. And he did spend one pretty much sleepless night.  And who can blame him?  I mean, who wants a rogue footless mouse after them? 

And if you are ever sleeping in the Roslyn and you hear something?  Beware of Limpy! Or the ghost of Limpy! Whatever! Pretty Scary!

JJ outie!

Whooooooo! (ghost noise)