I walked into my apartment yesterday after one of my visits home and found my roommates walking around, intensely searching the floors, holding brooms, knives, and a katana. "Andy," they said. "There's a mouse somewhere in here."

I've dealt with mice before. My dad became an expert in fighting them off, until the mice in our house evolved. They began advanced planning and even strategy to get our cereal. The FBI questioned us once about a shipment of AK-47's ordered to our address. Since then, it's been total war.

This mouse infestation, however, I am not expecting to be nearing as crafty or as well-armed. We just had my one roommate's 21st birthday, so as one can expect, there is a lot of grain-based liquid dried and sticky on the hardwood. The party lasted most of the weekend, peaking on Friday and Saturday, meaning the mouse could have just decided to crash the last few days. Maybe we'll just find it sleeping on our couch Monday morning, icepack in hand, with the lights dimmed; then we can easily kick it out.

I've told my roommates before that I don't like the unnecessary suffering of most creatures. I asked my roommates that if they needed to kill the mouse, could they please kill it quickly? Pests needed to be dealt with, but if the dealings could be humane, I would prefer it. My dad instilled this in me. He only used the classic mousetraps, the quick-kill, metal traps. He refused to use poison on the mice in our house until the mice started to enrich uranium in the basement.

I walked in today and started cleaning my room (nothing like an infestation to catalyze such an infrequent event). My roommate John then stomped by my room carrying his katana. He looked in, said hi, and then continued into the front room. I heard his voice booming across the house moments later, "BOB! Come on out, you lucky drunk little son of a bitch!" I peered out of my room at John, and he justified himself, "I named him Bob."

There were pans of liquor and beer in several corners of the house. John set these out Sunday night intending to get the mouse tipsy enough to catch, a supposed home remedy. The whole night, John was watching the pans, deciding once that the level of beer had gone down and that Bob had gotten past our watch. I did not have the heart to tell John that, until we mopped up the floors, there wouldn't be any need for a mouse to visit any specific spot in the apartment to get beer.

I knew the mice infestation recently had resurgence at my parents' house, and I called my dad for some advice. Over the sounds of gunfire, my dad told me that the best bait he’d ever used on traps were Tootsie Rolls. They needed to be somewhat soft and not three-year old Halloween Tootsie Rolls, but they could easily be used on quick-kill traps or for poison. Peanut butter can work, but cheese, unlike in cartoons, really doesn’t. If a mouse actually does go for the cheese, it will likely succeed and sneak the cheese away safely. If the mouse gets away like this, you may have to worry about that mousetrap being reset in that next bowl of cereal or next pork chop you eat. At least that's what happened with the mice in our house, my dad said.

My first pet, actually, was a mouse that got caught by the tail on one of my dad's mousetraps. He was very proud that he didn’t kill her, and after her tail came off, she was christened "Stubby." She was kept in a large peanut butter jar with a tissue, sticks, and an assortment of seeds, fresh vegetables, and, you guessed it, beer. Well, not so much the beer, but there was a Tootsie Roll given to Stubby every once in a while.

It's ironic to be fighting a creature so much like my first pet. I loved that little house mouse, and I remember crying when she died. However, we are college students. We need to keep the mouse away from our limited food supply. We need to catch the mouse—brooms, traps, poison, Japanese samurai swords, whatever means necessary. My roommates and I discussed calling our landlord to do something about the infestation, but then we figured we should give it a few more days. It would be nice to clean up all the beer puddles first.