Fruitie Puffs and a Hazmat Suit

I find myself experiencing my first (and unfortunatley not the last) winter in upstate New York. Let's be honest, it's practically Canada and is a far cry from the palm trees I left in Silicon Valley. At times like this I am glad I have a warm home--unfortunately the forest creatures are not so lucky and so they have decided to make my apartment their personal wildlife refuge.

It's been three days since we made the fateful discovery that we have mice. Yes mice. Real live actual mice. And not the run of the mill house mouse--no these are bonified white-belly field mice found only in rural areas. (I am told on the Internet not to worry becuase they rarely come indoors) Fortunately for us, these are the larger ones that carry lime disease and the hauntavirus.

There are three particularly disturbing things I would like to point out about this experience:

1-I called the apartment office and no one called me back. When I talked to them about it, they said sorry and that the person you talked to must not have thought it was a big deal. She said they didn't give mice a second thought. Excuse me? How are rodents in my living space not a big deal?

2-We had gone to dinner the night before and I had a sealed plastic bag in my purse that was full of snacks for Mia. Fruitie puffs, rice cakes, animal crackers and the like. Saturday morning the snacks are no longer in my purse. I found the bag behind my couch and practically empty! Which tells me that the mice not only crawled around in my favorite purse, wallet and cell phone, but also that they are large enough to drag the bag to a secret location and consume the contents. I'm pretty sure I just fed the whole family for the entire winter. Any ideas on how to sanitize a cloth purse or am I SOL?

3- Does anyone know what the hauntavirus or lime disease would do to a particulary small and cute eight month old baby? Am I the only one feeling alarmed here? So naturally like any good mother would do, I put on the closest thing I own to a Hazmat suit and sanitized my apartment. Lysol, Chlorox and a big scrub brush were involved.

The moral of the story is that no matter how clean of a person you might be, you can still be the unfortunate recipient of winter houseguests. But the happy ending (hopefully ending...) is that we have cought two of them and I have to admit that it was gratifying to see their little carcases leaving my apartment.