Edi mouse horror stories guaranteed to make your skin crawl

Having a mouse in your flat is a rite of passage for any Edi student, whether you like it or not.

It’s a well-known fact that rodents love to hide out and even breed inside Edinburgh’s old buildings; leaving us with unwanted flatmates who don’t pay rent.

However, just because it’s expected that you’ll have a furry guest in your flat at some point, doesn’t mean it’s not a traumatic experience.

We asked you over on Instagram to send us your Edinburgh mouse horror stories, and here are the absolute worst which are guaranteed to make you sleep with one eye open tonight.

TW: explicit mouse trap content

The cereal intruder

“I woke up one morning hungover and went to grab some cereal. As I poured it into my bowl, a dead mouse tumbled out.”

The sofa surfer

“After smelling a rancid smell from our sofa for about three days, we put on gloves and masks to find a dead mouse in our sofa underneath one of the cushions. It was flat because we had been sitting on it for so long.”

The slippery one

“I once caught a mouse on a sticky trap and the only way to get it off was to rub it in olive oil. I ended up massaging this oily mouse and struggled trying to hold onto it before I could go and release it. So slippery.”

The shoe suspect

“My flatmate was going to netball training and as she was putting her trainers on, she found a dead mouse in one of them.”

The sleeping companion

“I was making my bed one morning and flapped up my duvet to find a mouse at the bottom of my bed. It had most likely spent the night in bed with me. 

“I shouted for my flatmates and they threw a bowl into my room for me to catch the mouse in. But as I went to catch it, the mouse jumped directly at my face and ran behind my desk. I never saw it again and there’s no hole behind my desk, so it might still be in my room for all I know.”

The one who wouldn’t give in

“We had an injured mouse in our kitchen that was clearly in pain and dying, so we though the best thing to do would be to kill it and ends its suffering. We decided to suffocate it, and managed to get the mouse into a freezer bag. We then pushed out all the air and sealed the bag shut.

“But instead of dying quickly as hoped, the mouse just kept moving around inside the bag. We decided we couldn’t go through with being murderers, so took it outside and let it out under a bush. Even though it was alive when we left, the mouse promptly died right outside our front door and the corpse remained there for a few days.”

The fourth flatmate

“In fourth year, we moved into our flat and opened the fridge to find a dead mouse under the door. We left it for our landlady to see and she just laughed at it and said, ‘oh, a mouse!'”

The scrambler

“We were trying to catch the Pepa the flat mouse and we somehow cornered her at the edge of the room where she had nowhere to go, and she jumped in between the bed frame and the mattress.

“One of us was standing on the mattress and accidentally squished her. She’s a vegan.”

The cannibal

“We were living in a grim Marchmont flat and heard a mouse trap go off in the night and thought ‘ah it’s chill the bastard is caught we will sort it in the morning’. We then heard frantic mouse noises for the rest of the night, and woke up to a cannibal mouse attack.”

 

The massacre

“During first year in halls, we tried to use humane traps for mice at first, but they don’t work great, so my flatmate went out and bought snappy traps.

“We came home one day to little mice with their heads snapped off and mouse blood everywhere. Even though she bought the traps, my flatmate wouldn’t clean up the mess as she’s a vegan.”

The potential rat 

“I woke up one night to the sound of scuffling across my bedroom floor. I knew it was mice, so I stayed as still as possible and listened for a while. I came to the conclusion that there must have been about four or five mice darting across my floor and bouncing off the walls, so I shot up quickly to see if I could get a glimpse.

“As I sat up one jumped off my pillow, across the bed and onto the floor. Would love to believe it was only a teeny cute mouse, but he did have a fat fat tail. I keep telling myself it wasn’t a rat but I can’t be sure.”

Related articles recommended by this writer:

• Here are the 10 emotional stages of having mice in your student flat

• Meet the mice of Edinburgh: the rodents who befriended the people they lived with

• There are 8 types of second year flats and I’m about to tell you which one you are