A neighbor's 'pet' mouse once got loose inside the walls of the building I lived in and when I saw the little fucker scurry across my bathroom floor, I quite literally jumped onto my kitchen table. Any given night, when I spy a spider — no matter how small, I can be heard yelling for one of my sons to come KILL it. Now, I am fully aware that spiders keep insect populations under control and they are beneficial to the ecosystem, but they freak me out in the worst way. I break out in a sweat and my anxiety level goes through the roof. Having worked for a pest control company, I now know far more about each of these pests than I care to admit, which has done nothing to quell my fears.
It has been said that my reaction to these things is entertaining, as I am most often easy going and not typically ruffled. I have a friend who had hairless rats, and though I did eventually warm up to them, it has not changed my view of mice. Hairless rats are domesticated and don't have fleas. I am one of the fortunate ones whose skin reacts poorly to flea bites. It's like blackfly bites times 10. A truly miserable experience. Hairless rats don't carry the host of diseases that mice do (think Hantavirus), and just don't have the same creep factor as their feral cousins.
Five days into our new place and I have flea bites. My landlord maintains that the two previous tenant did not have pets and is insistent that the house was thoroughly cleaned prior to us moving in. Well, my skin doesn't lie, and while there may have been no pets living in this house, there is obviously some kind of rodent as I found a good size hole under the upstairs baseboard heater that leads into the eaves. The carpet and wall have the appearance of having been gnawed, and though there may not be mice living in the walls currently (it's too warm), there clearly have been resident rodents at some point. The thing about mice is that they can squeeze through an opening the size of a pencil eraser, though they will chew at that opening to make it bigger. Fleas, well those assholes can live dormant for up to 18 months. Stir them awake with the promise of a free blood meal and they will feed off a human if no animal is around to infest.
I am hoping my new landlord will have a better response to this morning's text revealing my discovery last night, as his insistence that the house was clean and no one owned pets when I contacted him yesterday was most unsatisfactory given the amount of money I just paid him to move in here. I want the issue fixed and I want the fleas addressed, and I do not think that is unreasonable. I have no doubt that he is annoyed by me at the moment, but the reality is that he owns this property, not me. He has a legal obligation to correct/fix issues that affect the quality of habitation when there are hazards and irritants involved. Mice urinated and defecate as they crawl; they do not have a designated area in which they do these things, and they chew through anything — including electrical wires. I am crossing my fingers and thinking positive thoughts that this issue will be resolved to my satisfaction quickly. I'd really like to sleep in my new bed and not continue to be bitten by fleas.
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