For a few weeks I have been hearing faint scratching coming from within the walls of our apartment - mostly from the bathroom, which is behind the kitchen sink. I assumed it was mice in the walls but hadn't had any run-ins with them for the entire year or so that we have lived in our current residence.

Until last Wednesday.

Wednesday night I was sitting and reading a book when all of a sudden I saw a mouse run head-on into the bathroom door and scamper away. Later that night, while sitting still to see if the mouse would come back, I ended up counting what I think were three (3) mice in all, one being a very small infant.

This grossed me out because although they are not rats, mice can still carry diseases and furthermore, it's my house and they are intruding. I woke up Valerie and informed her that there were mice, but that late at night there was nothing we could do.

I didn't sleep well that night for fear of a mouse walking on top of me while I slept. The ultimate no-no.

Thursday Valerie called our rental agency (who sucks by the way) and informed them of the mouse problem. They said they had a guy who was really good at finding the mouse holes and filling them and that he would come out and take care of the problem. He called Valerie later and told her to buy some old-fashioned mouse traps as well as some glue traps (PETA members will be disgusted).

We didn't see any signs of mice the rest of the weekend, although on Friday night we bought some traps and set them out in strategic places in the kitchen where the mice had been seen.

Sunday evening roles around and Valerie and I are about ready to head to bed when we hear what sounded like a mouse in the kitchen. I looked up and sure enough there was a mouse ON MY KITCHEN COUNTER scampering down behind the oven and out of sight. Valerie got a good look at it too - up until this point I had been the only one to see a mouse and at one point I thought that perhaps I was hallucinating or something.

Without any more signs of mice we went to bed.

Around 1:30 in the morning (on my birthday mind you) we woke up to the sounds of a mouse running around our apartment. I jumped up and flipped on the light only to find a mouse just inches away from Valerie's head, shimming up the power cord for our alarm clock. It scurried off into the darkness.

We moved the traps around a bit to see if that would deter the mice from exploring our apartment and left one light on so we could see what was happening while we tried to sleep. We didn't get much sleep, tossing and turning while trying to listen for evidence of mice runnning around again.

Eventually sleep overtook us, although we never got a very deep sleep.

Around 6:30 in the morning Valerie woke me up saying that she thought she heard something and wanted to check the snap trap. Sure enough there was our mouse friend on the wrong end of Victor, our trusty snap trap (see below - Warning: Not for the faint of heart or PETA members).

The battle has just begun. Our goal now is to survive with as few mice as possible while we look for a place to buy here on Capitol Hill.