Good Morning, Neighbor

I don’t take out the trash. I feel that phrase implies a calm, orderly procession in which I would remove the refuse from my apartment to the appropriately labeled bins outside of my building in a predetermined manner. What I do is more of a chaotic flailing—carrying far too many boxes and bags at once, and usually littering the stairs with debris as I make the mad dash from third floor to first before the garbage truck rumbles through every Monday morning, early and prompt.

I consider myself a fairly organized individual. I am blessed with the capacity to consider the pros and cons of hypothetical situations and to make informed decisions based on my advanced ponderings. I can plan ahead and both get the job done and reassess prior arrangements on the spot to bend to unforeseen but now omnipresent circumstances. But to actually get the trash to the truck in a timely fashion, well, that’s where this system breaks down.

Last Monday morning, like all other Mondays previous, started with exactly this sort of bustle. Except this time, in my haste to collect the recyclables, I accidentally knocked over the mousetrap nestled at the far end of the kitchen. Correction: I thought I knocked over the mousetrap. When I reached to quickly right the overturned trap, however, I suddenly found myself holding not only the contraption, but a mouse too. Correction: A dead mouse, too. My beautifully diligent landlady, due to the untimely sighting of a little grey mouse the night before, had strategically placed the trap.

I was really not so much upset by the mouse (the live one) as I was at first offended. A mouse, I had come think, was a sure sign of a shoddy abode, and I had never until this moment shared my residence with such a creature. My apartment is a happy and clean little home. Sure, it has the usual cabinet dings and water stains here and there, but in general my two roommates and I are women of good housekeeping. Therefore, I could only assume that this mouse must not be an omen of filth, but rather a critter of good culinary taste. Still, you don’t want to be the tenant who ignores the occasional mouse and is later blamed for the rodent colony infestation that overruns the building. So we emailed the landlady, and she responded promptly.

It never occurred to me that a mousetrap would actually catch the mouse. My entire knowledge of mousetraps comes, I think, from old Tom and Jerry cartoons, and maybe that childhood boardgame, neither of which paints a particularly realistic picture of functionality. Except in the real world, traps actually do nab the critter—the evidence of which was now nestled in my hand, which I would wash repeatedly (my hand, not the mouse) all morning and still never feel quite good enough about it to want to eat breakfast. This post was originally about a new cornbread recipe. Prior to the garbage incident, I’d assembled the final slice on the counter, ready for photographing and eating. I threw it away without proper documentation. You’ll just have to wait.

After disposal, I of course emailed my landlady quickly to let her know the traps were a success, and she, the ever efficient lady that she is, responded immediately, and with this one line of wisdom: Did you through it away? If left around, it might smell.

It might smell? Welcome to my Brookline apartment—my third floor, non-airconditioned apartment. We’re approaching the first full week of July and already I took a shower twice yesterday for fear that I, an upstanding citizen with respectable hygiene, might smell. I’m guessing the rotting rodent carcass incubating in my kitchen definitely would smell.

So, I emailed her back, fairly quickly, to let her know that, yes, the mouse had left the building. What I didn’t mention is that I was so panicked about this inevitable stink issue that I all but chased down the city garbage truck in my zeal to remove the rodent from the premises. I mean I hit the pavement with keys and bagged mouse so fast I didn’t even change out of my pajamas. And then, when I reached the street and realized the truck had already passed our apartment, and that meant tipping the deceased into the bottom of a barrel that would sit outside our open windows for the next week, in city summer heat, I thrashed through the back streets of Brookline, scantily clad, and whipped the bag into a neighbor’s trash that had yet to be collected.

Let me just end today’s post with this thought: I’m not offended by the words of my landlady. They don’t imply a naiveté on her part, nor necessarily do they suggest her insufficient faith in my mouse-disposing capabilities. No, what’s truly upsetting about her seemingly senseless warning is that it is likely the fossilized conversational remnants of past dialogues with past tenants who assumed that the landlady herself should cross town in the middle of the day to dispose of the critter, and that they and the deceased rodent should just sit tight until then and wait. My email response then was not a snide remark either, but rather my reestablishment as a tenant in good standing. Don’t worry, Landlady, my e-reply implied, I’ve got this.

 

Better luck for a breakfast recipe next time. For now, enjoy these pomegranate photos. Out of season, they're now a market oddity. Still, they’re just the best sprinkled on salads, over pancakes, or simply eaten as is, peeled from the pith and consumed, so sweetly, in the same moment.