3am Overkill

Ahead of my 7th anniversary in the city - which will mark the amount of time many say actually makes one a newyorker - I hit an indisputable Big Apple benchmark. Dealing with mice in the apartment. It had been a week since this little fucker had been driving me nuts, keeping me up at night with the creepy noises of his teeth sinking deep into various cookies, pasta and rice bags, avoiding spring traps and poison, to then disappear every single time it was in sight. In my rare visual encounters with it I was left speechless by its speed. I assure you, you get the feeling of a presence, almost like a hungry ghost who has the urge, every night, to mess around with your food and leaving weird black shit all over your counter space. Then finally, last night, the moment I hear it again, this time fooling around on a kitchen shelf, I arm myself with a mop stick. It is still a mistery how it could climb up there and I have a long way to go to seal potential points of entry. I knew that the odds of catching it and kill it myself without the help of traps were going to be slim. But last night was different: I was more exasperated, and it got too reckless. It ended up being cornered, looking right at me while pointing the mop towards it. And then - thump - a single motion jerk with the head of the mop stick, like I am playing pool. I was faster than it thought I could be, hell, let's face it, faster than I thought I could be, and it falls on the side. I think it's getting away, but I have actually hit it real good, because it's not getting up. For a couple of seconds its tiny ears shake like it's having a seizure or something, and I almost feel pity for it. But hey, it's brief. I feel all cocky about it, texting the picture around like a trophy, and can barely get any sleep afterwards.