Hit the Rodent

Of what, you may be wondering, is this a photo? Ah, well you should ask. This gizmo, as far as we can tell, holds photos and, when you wind it up, gizzers around with them in a strange spastic manner. This useful device was unearthed from under my desk during this afternoon's Disgusting Rodent Incident (DRI).
I've known for several weeks that there are mice in the building, but I had convinced myself that they would be staying in the front of the building (the power of positive denial thinking) and were not, therefore, my problem. Today, while typing, I kept hearing a strange rusting sound underneath my desk, as if someone was down there rifling through papers (an intern? A gnome?). I tried to ignore it and then, when I could no longer, I went to the front of the building and semi-hysterically grabbed our Advertising Director, who has a certain take-charge attitude when it comes to...um, everything.
Generally mice don't hang out in one place (Right? Don't they mostly dart around?) but, I decided, this one was probably trapped under a pile of file folders, water bottles and old newspapers. (Or possibly was building a nest out of same). Seriously, the under my desk area is kind of as insanely messy as the rest of my office, probably more so, and I couldn't even begin to fathom sticking my head down there and pulling things out while waiting for a mice to run up my arm (I actually just threw up a little in my mouth just from typing that sentence). Our AD had no such issues (she's been catching mice for weeks and releasing them outside). She and our receptionist closed my door and set to work. The result was they learned the mouse is coming in and out of my heating vent under my desk (so that's where my heating vent is!). So they closed it and put a trap out just to be safe. They also found the weird gizmo above. Plus an old photo of my ex-husband with Kita and his dog and a black belt. Score! I really needed a black belt. And some pretty nice purple nail polish. And Osama bin Laden. OK, not really, but the rest is true. Plus a calculator and some CDs. And it's very unlikely, they say, this particular mouse will come back through this particular vent because it would have to move seven phonebooks off of it to do so. And really, who needs heat?