Man, mice scare the crap out of me too. If you're seeing them running around in the open, there are even more in hiding. Mice are pretty good at staying out of the open, if there are 5 running around the chip aisle, there are probably hundreds having a buffet under the shelves and worse yet in the chip bags.
Put me down as not a fan of shopping in Superstore, I've always found it to be too dirty, smelly and disorganized...this just reaffirms all that for me. Most larger buildings will have mice, but good pest management will keep it from reaching levels like this. Hopefully you call the health dept and file a complaint!
The only thing that grosses me out more than mice are rats. Frig. So gross.
When I was living in Victoria, the hugest rat I have ever seen got into my house, and it seriously took months to get rid of it. I could always hear it running around at night... through the vents, across the kitchen floor, everywhere. I was always so scared so I'd lock myself in my room and put a towel across the crack between the door and the floor just to make sure it couldn't get in.
At first my roomates and I tried to catch it with one of those humane traps so we could just put it outside somewhere after. But it wasn't working, so we started setting up these massive wooden traps. But it was so big that it always managed to get the cheese or peanut butter out of the trap, and even if the trap snapped on him, he was such a beast that it wouldn't kill him. Finally we had to set poison blocks around the house. He seriously ate like 10 of them, and it still took weeks for him to finally die. The worst part was that once he died, we couldn't find the body... we could only smell it. A few weeks later, my roomate was wasted and fell into a counter, and moved it away from the wall... only to discover dead ratty.
I'm still shuddering even thinking about it. Did I mention that I hate rats?
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to enthused For This Useful Post:
I can't believe how many mouse stories I have. Really long winded one here:
When I was a little younger and still lived with my parents we had a house in edgemont overlooking a very nice wetland area. My mom knew it would be a big mouse zone, so she'd always put poison around the house to keep them out. When it came time to sell the house she didn't bother with the poison. Unfortunately, the house selling was delayed by a few months and she forgot to get the poison out.
One night my folks were out of town so I had my girlfriend at the time (who would later become my wife) come over for the first actual night where we could sleep together and not set an quiet alarm for 3 am followed by frantic sneaking out of the house to avoid the watchful, judging eyes of parents.
I had a room in the basement and all was going well. The mood was set and I began to partake in the beautiful ritual of trying to nail my girlfriend while the folks were out of town. Something was odd though. Every few minutes we would be distracted by an odd sound coming from the window. Almost sounded like somebody was running their fingernails against the outside of the house. After a while I decided to go check outside to make sure there wasn't an issue.
I could see my girlfriend through the window with her ear to the wall trying to figure it all out. I could see nothing against the house so I gave the area next to the window a small kick. About a half second after I did my girlfriend jumped in the air and ran out of the room. Turns out my kick startled a bunch of mice behind the wall and they all started scurrying like crazy.
We moved rooms but that is just something you can't forget. Greasy little punks wrecked my sexy party.
Story doesn't end there, oh no. We set out what we felt to be a good amount of poison and naively assumed it would do the job. A few days later I go into my bathroom (also in the basement) and there is a single mouse dropping in the middle of the floor. odd. I turn on the fan and begin to have my shower. As I exit the shower there are two more droppings. I can't figure it out. I walk over to turn off the fan and a fourth dropping hits me in the shoulder. There were enough mice now in the ceilings that there were droppings in and around the fan going into my bathroom and when I turned the fan on they were being projected into my bathroom.
Quick side-story. My mom had a Styrofoam rooster given to her by a friend. Mainly given as a joke because it looked ridiculous, the rooster had a motion sensitive mechanism that would emit a deafening cack-a-doodle-doo at the slightest nudge. One day my dad threw it down the stairs towards my room, obviously releasing the sounds that freaked the hell out of me. In anger I walked up to the styro-basterd and tore the motion controlled thing out of his chest and threw it in the corner of the basement.
A couple nights later it's about 2 am and I'm screwing around on my computer doing what I can only assume was scouring the internet super highway for internet super porn. All of a sudden out of the dead of night I hear the ominous "cack-a-doodle-doo" scream from outside my door. You know when the answer to your inner questions are obvious but you have to go through the Usual Suspects-esque train of events to put the whole puzzle together? I slowly looked outside my door to see a mouse standing on top of the motion sensor I threw into the corner. Possibly the creepiest moment of my life. I caught him in a pizza box and drowned him. I feel kinda bad about that, but F him ... he's a mouse.
We called in Abel Pest control and we were greeted by a really nice guy who reluctantly told us that there may have been a misunderstanding. He thought he was coming to a business, not a residential address. He explained that they primarily deal with large infestations at businesses, but since he made the trip out and brought an army's worth of poison he'd set the poison traps and return in a week to collect them.
You have to understand the poison to feel the gravity of the situation. Each trap contained 4 chunks of poison. Each chunk was about half the length of a sharpie but two or three times the thickness (almost looked like a short sidewalk chalk). In order for a mouse to be killed by the poison, the animal must eat about 10% of it's own body weight. This helps keep the poison from being overly dangerous to pets as fido would have to eat a few pounds of it before he runs into trouble.
So this guy lays out about 10 traps, 40 chunks of poison in all and returns the next week to find each and every single trap licked clean. I don't even like doing the math to figure out how many mice must have been in that ceiling.
Sold the house ... the mice were gone but the basement smelled funny.
The only thing that grosses me out more than mice are rats. Frig. So gross.
When I was living in Victoria, the hugest rat I have ever seen got into my house, and it seriously took months to get rid of it. I could always hear it running around at night... through the vents, across the kitchen floor, everywhere. I was always so scared so I'd lock myself in my room and put a towel across the crack between the door and the floor just to make sure it couldn't get in.
At first my roomates and I tried to catch it with one of those humane traps so we could just put it outside somewhere after. But it wasn't working, so we started setting up these massive wooden traps. But it was so big that it always managed to get the cheese or peanut butter out of the trap, and even if the trap snapped on him, he was such a beast that it wouldn't kill him. Finally we had to set poison blocks around the house. He seriously ate like 10 of them, and it still took weeks for him to finally die. The worst part was that once he died, we couldn't find the body... we could only smell it. A few weeks later, my roomate was wasted and fell into a counter, and moved it away from the wall... only to discover dead ratty.
I'm still shuddering even thinking about it. Did I mention that I hate rats?
Man that thing sounds like a real beast. I wonder what he was eating... in your house...
__________________
"With a coach and a player, sometimes there's just so much respect there that it's boils over"
-Taylor Hall
For every 5 you see there is probably 100 that you don't see. A good pest control regime should eliminate all but a few of the mice. I know most stores have pest control visits regularily. When I worked at Futureshop we had pest control there once a month, sprayed the exterior and set out traps. We never had an issue, mostly preventative. I don't know about Superstore.
I don't think a Futureshop comparison is fair. Last I checked, the only thing edible in Futureshop is the chocolate bars and gum at the checkouts. It's not a store that's likely to have a mouse problem in the first place.
People get mice in their houses eating 1 box of cereal. Imagine the difficulty of keeping "pests" away from a massive store full of food. Call me a hippie, but I don't see mice as pests. We developed over their territory, they're just trying to survive.
Just a follow up; about a week after this I was at the restaurant across the street (Original Joes) and asked if the mouse "scare" had made much of a difference in Superstore business. They said as soon as the store was open you couldn't tell that anything had ever happened. It was as busy as it ever was. The general public seems to have short memories.
__________________
"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
I don't think a Futureshop comparison is fair. Last I checked, the only thing edible in Futureshop is the chocolate bars and gum at the checkouts. It's not a store that's likely to have a mouse problem in the first place.
.
Yeah but they ask the dumbest questions about surround sound, and keep asking us where we kept the porn.
so we'd stomp on their heads.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
