I ended up fitfully sleeping last night, curled in a fetal ball, grabbing the covers like a shield barring certain doom. Pathetic, really.

The reason? The goddamned Algernon-smart mouse that cannot be killed, which has taken up residence here for what is now months. I literally have set three different kinds of traps and threw in some poison to boot. Yet, it lives.

NOTHING seems so loud and frightening when you are alone and half asleep then the stomping feet and chewing clickety teeth of a rodent. And, I had thought my room an oasis it had not reached, since there’s no food and the door is usually shut.

Normally, when I’m neurotically sleepless, I’m afraid of a home invasion by heavily armed young men looking for some of my more portable and sellable possessions, who are more than willing to smack me around and act out in all sorts of unsavory manners. One of the things that I do miss by living alone is the comfort of thinking someone might hear my screams.

Last night though, it was giant sounding footsteps and the irrational fear of something that small possibly touching me.