Why am I afraid of something so small?

When I sat in my chair at my desk this morning, it squeaked. Hmmm, I thought, this chair needs a little WD40. I proceeded to spin around in my chair, to bounce up and down, roll it back and forth, to see how bad the squeaking problem was. Oddly, the squeaking was not corresponding to any of my movements. That's when I realized I was actually hearing the sound of a mouse on a glue trap.

I know that sound well, from my time living in the basement unit of an apartment building downtown. CPM and I had a private entrance that was in a narrow alley, across from a few dumpsters (said dumpsters were also a convenient public toilet for various homeless fellows...ah, college living). There were holes in the baseboard everywhere. We stuffed them with steel wool. Once, I swear something was trying to chew through that steel to get me, as I huddled in fear on the living room futon. Another time, CPM left for work in the morning, and I woke up thinking that the battery in the smoke detector must have died, due to the frequency of the squeaking. Once it registered that I was listening to a mouse, I got the hell out of dodge and left the guy stuck on the trap for CPM to deal with upon his return to the apartment. (Said apartment also featured cockroaches that were roughly the size of 747s. Yeah, I do not miss that place.)

I have a deadly irrational fear of mice. I don't know why. They freak me out. Rats are even worse. I can safely look at the pet mice and rats in Petsmart, but the real thing, in the wild, skeeves me completely.

So, this morning, I began to thoroughly investigate my workstation. Where had maintenance staff put the trap? I moved my waste bin aside, and almost fainted when I saw a stray paper towel behind it. I was lightheaded at this point. Finally, standing up, surveying the open office area, I saw the trap, fifteen feet from me. The little guy had drug his trap away from the wall, out into the open area. He was a real fighter. He was also gigantic. Unfortunately for him, the building maintenance has a clear mouse disposal policy. And I'm wishing we had a department cat.