VILE SMILES

I never got into hunting. I knocked a rabbit’s eye out with a rock and broke a seagull’s wing with a slingshot on separate occasions. Both times I threw up. Both times I cried. Both times my grandfather was looking at me with utter contempt and a “Did this kid grow up in a pussywillow cabin on licorice lane?” sigh on his face. I could just never get into it.

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To this day I don’t think I have really ever held a gun, lit an m-80, or taken a girl on a four wheeler to go drop acid in the woods….or whatever you people that grew up eighty miles from the nearest building over five stories do. However the Darwinian itch sets in and in an attempt to avoid my testes retreating back into my abdomen to transform into a vagina, I go to extra lengths to get all-hunter/gatherer whenever given the chance. It has nothing to do with being in my mid-twenties and realizing I have to get all drastic and fetch me a grizzly’s index claw to make up for the fact I never came home with a scalp. (Wait, do you scalp animals? See?-I don’t fucking know. I try to talk about hunting and end up sounding like a serial killer) Rather I keep it to the confines of my apartment and has mostly to do with smaller game.

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I had a totally mice infested apartment in Manayunk three years ago. It started with me being a lame-ass and setting up the mouse traps around the place which did prove pretty effective. Being the freak that I am, I deemed that this was not nearly exciting enough. One night about half way into a bottle of Bombay— by myself I might add, I saw one of these little jerkoffs scamper across my kitchen floor. As is frequently the case when I drink gin, I was totally naked except for a blue bandana on my head. I went to my bedroom and grabbed an air gun that I have had since I was fifteen and set up camp in a corner of my kitchen to wait for him to come out from under the refrigerator. After about a minute and a half I got impatient and started talking shit…..to the mouse- “Come on out asshole! I already killed your whole family! What a bunch of dumb asses!”—I swear there is psilocybin in gin. When he wouldn’t come out I would fire a warning pellet at the fridge. I clearly had underestimated my opponent and advanced tactics were in order. From my corner I hopped up on top of the island so he couldn’t see me and fired pellets all over my kitchen for the better part of two hours. I never saw him.

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Next morning I go to take out the trash and my neighbor Katie is out on the porch.

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Katie: What’s up Ry Ry. Long night huh?

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Me: No I actually stayed in and just laid low. Had a couple drinks but kept it rather gentlemanly.

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Katie: Haha right. You know you should probably keep your blinds shut. But if your idea of being gentlemanly is screaming to yourself and running around your apartment with a semi dangling around, then you pulled it off pretty well. Jesus Christ Ryan it was like you were reenacting Lord of the Flies.

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Me: I had a semi? Weird. No actually I was trying to catch a mouse. Sorry about the blinds but I just got a little tipsy and…

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Katie (interrupting): You know what- I really don’t need to hear the rest of it. From the day I moved in and your idea of conversation was to tell my mom something about your ex girlfriend having to crush up Valtrex and put it in her Cheerios. So now nothing really surprises me.

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Me: Oh c’mon. She asked me if this is a nice neighborhood. I just made a point to highlight the low crime rate but that some of the people are shitty or just complete whores. Whatever-she laughed.

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Katie: Right. Well good luck with the mouse. Later

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I caught the mouse a few days later when it walked into one of the traps. But there is something to be said about getting all nude, going on a vision quest in your own home, and shooting shit. It makes you not feel as much as a half man.

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Fast forward to last night and I have a mouse. I don’t want to act like too much of a freak by slipping myself a mickey and grabbing an axe out of my closet as to totally creep out my girlfriend. So I try to act somewhat like a human being and set up a couple of those sissified traps. You can imagine my elation this morning when I wake up and the traps are still spring loaded but the food on them is missing. This could quite simply mean that I have cockroaches as well but I am going to tell myself that I have met a true opponent—He is the Houdini-mouse who can pull off death defying mouse acts like and acrobatic backflip over the trap and eat the peanut butter whilst in mid-air……or I have roaches.

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Nevertheless all Friday plans are off as I have to get out of work and go track down some war-paint