Who Said There’s no Wildlife in New York City?
When you move to a concrete jungle like New York City, you can expect many things: sidewalks, jackhammers, high rises, and traffic. Lots of traffic.
But I was surprised to know that New York abounds with wildlife. And a lot of it is tiny.
I’ll never forget how excited I was to land my first full-time job at a social service agency in Manhattan’s Chinatown. I’d be able to use my Chinese language skills and, best of all, I’d get my own desk! No matter that it was a fourth floor walk-up in a building in dire need of a facelift.
The blush of my new job quickly wore off when I arrived one morning to the desperate squeak of a poor little mouse, stuck in a glue trap under my desk. The building super had baited the trap with a dollop of hoisin sauce and, sure enough, it worked. “Laoshu, Laoshu!” I called. The super came from the back of the floor, grabbed the trap and disappeared down the hall. Within minutes, he returned to my desk, the trap empty except for a few strands of fur peeking out from under the new dollop of hoisin sauce. No reason to throw out a perfectly good glue trap after a single use, I suppose.
As the weeks went on, I soon discovered the other creatures living in my desk space. A cockroach egg sac had burst open in my pencil drawer, the minuscule little rascals scurrying off in every direction when exposed to light.
Such was my experience working in that agency for two years. Mice and cockroaches frequently showed up uninvited. And I, in turn, grew more and more blasé to the whole thing.
Of course, it’s a whole different ballgame when creatures arrive in your living space. There’s a real sense of violation. It was bad enough that my Bensonhurst apartment housed waterbugs (those enormous relatives of cockroaches that are simply too big to squish) that crept along the inside of my bathroom light fixture — taunting me from overhead. Close enough to see, but far enough away to ignore if I didn’t look up.
But worst of all was the day I discovered a nest beautifully composed of every type of bean and lentil from my kitchen cabinet. Maybe the little creature had come and gone, I thought. But, when we came face to face one day at the doorway between my bedroom and living space, I felt both sympathetic to the cute little mouse, and protective of my private space. I declared war.
My library research (many years pre-Internet) told me to block any holes or crevices in my apartment with plaster of Paris and steel wool. And I am, if nothing else, a good student. So, off I went to purchase the appropriate supplies, and returned to block the only hole I could find: a bowl-sized gap around my sink pipes. That did the trick, as I never had another furry visitor again. Too bad for the super, since I eliminated his only access to my plumbing.
Oh, and the fate of the little mouse? I caught him in a sticky trap behind the bookshelf next to my bedroom door. My Chinatown super would have been proud.