The Mouse That Roared

My mom treated me to a weekend at the incredible Japanese-onsen-style, koi-pond-laden Ten Thousand Waves Spa in Santa Fe. I spent the first morning languishing in a stunning outdoor hot tub, anticipating my first-ever massage appointment. But in the locker room, I checked my text messages and learned that mice—which, one might remember, I mortally fear—had again infiltrated my New York apartment. ("OMG AND THE ONE I SAW WAS NOT SMALL," texted my friend/housesitter).

Minutes later, I was face down on the massage table, greasy as a beignet and piled with hot stones, panicking, despairing, bargaining with God. "You're really tense," my masseuse noted.

"I know I don't know you, but I just found out there are mice in my apartment and I sort of need to talk about it," I said. I explained that the last time I'd had them, I didn't sleep for three days: "Every night I sat on my bed until dawn with all of the lights and the TV on, wearing big cowboy boots and crying and throwing magazines at the radiator." Perhaps this was too much information, but I couldn't help myself.

She paused. "You know," she said helpfully, "we attract animals with our own... kindred animal energy." My shoulder muscles must have somehow signaled my bafflement. "Like, sometimes people with mice are, like, spiritually invoking them, you know?"

I tried to chalk this up to her being a crunchy Santa Fe-an who'd never set foot in a New York apartment.

"Relax," she said.

"I'm trying," I whispered. "I don't think I can."

It turns out I was wrong: Five minutes in, I was a million times calmer, and after 20 I was blissed out completely; by the hour's end, it was as if I'd been shot with a tranquilizer dart meant for circus animals. The massages at Ten Thousand Waves are just that good, and anybody with vermin at home deserves to go New Mexico and have one.

(Back in New York, however, the reign of terror continues.)

—Cat Marnell, beauty assistant