This post was guest authored by Ashley Zillian ’18.

To preface this: I have a nasty habit of attracting animals into my room. I’m effectively the opposite of a Disney princess, because none of them are helpful and I hate them. (However, if any nearby squirrels are inclined to help me study for midterms, I will recant that statement.) My freshman year on second floor Lewis involved more bugs than I can count, including a house centipede that performed a little jig on my laptop screen once in the dead of night.

While I was using it.

Mocking me.

The most famous of those creatures was the creatively named Lewis, a bat that decided the best place for it to exist was inside of my wall for an entire day. If you’ve never heard a bat scream for 12+ hours straight, thank whoever or whatever you believe in. But that’s not why I’m here.

This year, like a certain someone else, I was given the distinct honor of living on first floor Caples. If that wasn’t special enough, I also had my first encounter with a mouse in November. And if you’ve read the article I just linked, you know where this story is going.

The first warning sign was when I returned from Thanksgiving break, and found a veritable murder scene in the form of the shredded remains of a bag of Hershey’s Kisses. Something in me prayed that maybe I had done it myself when I wasn’t paying attention. Did that make even the slightest bit of sense? Absolutely not, but I was in denial.

This quickly escalated when I found more chocolate remains strewn about my room. “Okay, that’s kind of messed up,” I thought to myself. I am not the neatest person, but I do not throw bits of chocolate all across the floor. However, I made the same, woefully misguided assumption that my fellow neighbors did—that he had died. Or had, at the very least, found greener pastures.

Let’s just say that watching a mouse jump off your dresser and nose dive into your heater is a wake-up call.

This is what he was eating. I didn’t even know they were in my room.

Mort, as he is apparently named, doesn’t do normal mouse things like 1.) Getting caught in mouse traps, or 2.) Getting the hell out of someone’s room when there’s a human in it. More accurately, he doesn’t do anything that normal mice do. He has mastered the art of eating peanut butter off of traps—off of everyone’s traps—and does not give a single care about the smell of peppermint. Did you know that mice hate the smell of peppermint? Mort doesn’t.

He also, as I discovered today, does not feel particularly obligated to be repelled by mouse repellent. In fact, he would much rather eat it. “It” being mouse repellent. As in repellent. For mice. The poison for Kuzco.

So now he’s probably in my closet, which is exactly where I did not want him. Hence the MOUSE REPELLENT.

Did I mention this asshole ate my lampshade? Because he ate my lampshade.

Who DOES that?

If you see him, don’t call for anyone. There’s no time. Throw a shoe at him or something. I don’t even care anymore.

UPDATE: The mouse has since been found, deceased. RIP.