A Mouse in the House

Two weeks ago now, in my endless internal debate about whether to stick with editing (no) or do another postdoc to recover my lost time (I shudder at the thought, which is why the procrastination), I asked for a sign. From whom, I don't know - maybe one of the lab god pantheon that cursed me during my graduate work by making me repeat the same supershift experiment 10 times to get "pretty bands" and blessed me during my postdoc by making my experiments actually work.

Either way, whether it was Crack, the god of erlenmeyer flasks (so named for the sound they make when dropped on the floor), or Ruh-Ruh, the god of imbalanced centrifuges, he/she has a sense of humor. I came home from a conference to find out that there had been a baby mouse in my house (mercilessly squashed and removed to the trash by my Mother-in-law, who was staying to watch the Spawn while I was out of town).

As an immunologist, there's no way that I can be afraid of mice, but I've had many a nightmare about being in the animal facility alone at 2am and having all of the mice suddenly get out of their cages and swarm me in horror-movie like revenge. The thought of one in my house freaked me out, however, especially with the Spawn (let alone a baby mouse, implying the presence of a mommy mouse), so I immediately went out and bought a bunch of "humane traps".

Later that afternoon, I saw another one (both in the basement). It was about 3 weeks old (I AM, after all, an expert on mice) and looked just like a B6. Aren't wild mice supposed to be brown? Sadly, in my efforts to capture it under a garbage can, there was an inadvertent cervical dislocation and my vow to never murder a mouse again was broken. Haven't seen one since...

So obviously, this was the sign I was looking for. But what does it mean? Is my vow-breaking a sign that I should go back to the lab? Were the mice there to remind me of how repugnant I think sacrificing them is? I'm no closer to an answer than I was before, but one thing I know - someone out there is listening (and maliciously contaminating tissue culture incubators).