It's a jungle in here.

Earlier this week -- it might have been Thursday -- I was making lunch in the kitchen when I noticed the dog getting agitated. He was pawing and sniffing at something on the floor, which, upon closer examination, turned out to be a not-quite-dead mouse who was flopping awkwardly around the way not-quite-dead things do.

Generally, I've dealt with apartment mice in one of two ways: If they're alive, I scream and pee on myself until they run away. If they're dead, I throw them out. But faced with a not-quite-dead mouse -- and a dog who looked like he might eat it at any second -- I panicked. Unwilling to touch it, I scooped up the mouse with a piece of sandpaper and, after a moment of indecision, ran to the window and opened it.

"Sorry, guy," I said, as I hurriedly dropped the mouse onto the fire escape. I watched as he tottered around for less than a second, then slipped between the slats and fell-- first to the second-story fire escape, and then to the ground floor patio, where he landed directly on the head of our new downstairs neighbor.

I am relatively sure that New Neighbor did not see me (I hurled myself back inside just as she started to look up), that she most likely thinks that a not-quite-dead mouse was walking
somewhere above and then just happened to fall, and that I am quite safe in pretending that this never happened. And even if she did see me... well, let's face it, I'm still going to deny the whole thing.

Which leaves me free to focus on the question of why this sort of thing always seems to happen to me.