In which I qualify as a New Yorker in one more respect

There has been a mouse in my house for about 6 weeks. After dark and I'm in bed, I hear her scuttling and gnawing behind the fridge area. I don't know what she does but I've gotten used to it. Sometimes I put in earplugs. We tolerate each other. But then! One day I came home to find...droppings under the grater on the counter! Now it's got serious. How does she get up there? And suddenly I can't eat at home until I've solved this one. And I'm biggest and I pay rent and I have artistic projects, so she has to move out. Now the hardware store offers the following methodologies: poisoned, twatted hard with iron bar on spring ("blood everywhere!" the Hispanic owner says triumphantly), or get stuck to gluey surface and rip off your fur/tail as you die of thirst or of squeaking. The internet has traps where they walk in to a plastic room and can't get out - sounded good but it got me thinking: can't I make one of those? Hmm maybe not. But surely I can trap a mouse....I use more internet and...

I get into bed at 10.30pm and start appreciating my memory foam once again and the newly applied duvet now that it is cold here. My mouse trap is set and I start to get out earplugs ready to cocoon off into slumber. Bang! My kitchen trash can receives a visitor landing from on high! "Dang!" I think, having only set it 4 minutes before. "I guess I set it much too teetering and its gone off on its own". But no! I hear intermittent scampering sliding little body sounds. My trashcan contains mouse! I get up, light on, absurdly slightly nervous checking out the can for my roomie. She's not there! Ah! But she is...and no bigger than my thumb and doing the stealth thing in the shadow of the corner keeping everso still. I give the can a shake. She squeaks and does several jumps up the can's plastic walls. I am glad I used the can and not my slow cooker now as vessel now that I see that a mouse really can jump 18" like the internet said.

Here is the trap:

1. Make a long cardboard tube.

2. Wipe blob of peanut butter on inner lip of end of tube.

3. Teeter tube over edge of kitchen counter.

4. Place trashcan beneath counter and tube.

5. Go quiet and wait.

Mice love a) peanut butter - oh yes they do! 4 minutes!  b) tubes - they just gotta do a nice tube if they see it!

So I put a tablespoon of water in the can and a little more peanut butter (pilfered from dandy 'olde' style peanut butter machine at work) to see her through the night. She jumps all night on and off - I shout "you're not going to die! Get some sleep..." She jumps and slides more.

In the morning smell of piss. I try to coax her into empty olive-pot for transportation but she is extremely skilled at fast slither manouvres though squeaks a few times at possibility of failure. So...she comes on my trip to work with me in the open-top trashcan. I resist introducing her to fellow pedestrians at numerous traffic lights. I walk 6 whole avenues to reach Central Park where she now resides. I place the can horizontally angled down a bit on the wall. She comes sliding off like a bmx rider and plops on the leaves a few feet below. She scuttles and sniffs. I take in her teeniness compared with the big bad city and of course...she finds a little pipe, a little hole, and I get why mouses love tubes. Safety! They can't be got.

The night is very quiet without her. I fantasize about her finding her way back from Central Park to her gnawed kitchen home. But so far the counter top is disinfected and sporting guacamole, sourdough, pickles and salads again....all for me.

Public chats of no small amusement

3 older women.

There was Carlotta who sat next to me on the bench outside nearby coffee shop of a sunday afternoon. She wore copper chords and tall boots, a long tawny merino cardi to her knees, Raybans, a little purse-bag - subtle green old suede with a big solid silver fastener, lots of blond hair, immaculate. Must have been nearly 60 and looking well. She used dowsing to sell paintings, was a health consultant (private) and was currently dowsing for gold in Colorado as a project. Her mother told her on her deathbed never to give up the pendulum. She came across sane but certainly eccentric. She said there were 6 rodents for every human in the city when I told her about mine. She believed life was too short to buy 'nack-offs' or copies of designer items. We celebrated Wholefoods.

Patricia, over 60, sat opposite me in the big well-lit cafe upstairs of Wholefoods near where I live with a big smorgasbord help-yerself cardbox box of raw stuff. A cold day, I was glad of choosing hot macaroni cheese and hot provencal white beans with some roasted tomatoes. In her brown broad shouldered suit and stretched tight facial skin and small eyes, she owned a Broadway theater and nonchalantly said she'd just bought Charing Cross theater in London with joined pub and was offering membership deals to the PriceWaterhouse-Coopers employees who worked in the stories above it. She didn't smile once but seemed to be enjoying things. She told me that Romney promised to make women   into prisoners if they had abortions. Why are women voting for him she exclaimed - I dont understand! Crazy times.

Adele I met on a bench outside the library. A character full of humour with a worn serious face. We enjoyed bitching about the miserable library staff, one of whom had told her off for being loud when she had a stern word with a child who was being loud. They are a funny staff. Adele must have been 70 - loads of rouge and black eye-liner and copper died hair. Black velvety outfit on her teeny frame sitting there with crossed arms and legs unamused by it all. She had worked in PR all her life and said they were all sleaze-bags. They had tricked her out of an artistic career. I described Madmen to her and she nodded. She added that PR were way ahead of advertising. I described Downton Abbey to her and we seemed to agree, based on my descriptions only, on its superiority owing to the couple of redemptive characters in it - who were kind and noble and interested in justice. I mentioned the wife in Madmen as a victim. Fascinatingly she took real objection. She closed her eyes and shook her head and said 'dont call her a victim - it's far more complicated than that.' I laughed and we chatted on. When I handed her my book 'The joy of living dangerously' (which I'm not yet but have made in-roads there) she held it one INCH from her good eye and scanned the title letter by letter. Her advice on buying a card for a pretty woman at work who only wears black ever and who I don't know, was not to risk a colourful card. She said she might freak out. I agreed.

John, my musical partner pointed out that the closeness of everything in Manhattan/Brookyln meant that you can get a lot done in a day in the way of meeing people, short trips etc. Made me think how that coupled with the ease of public chats must do a lot for business and development.
Carlotta claimed that staff in stores are expected to bring in clientele - a bit like having your own business but she dowses for Gold in Colorado.

Photos just uploaded!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/debrooze/
I just began using my flickr account. Now it has pictures from trip to Portland, Oregon and Cold Spring, New York.
Will post some writing soon.