See, my parents were gone for almost two weeks up helping Steph and her family while Leah had surgery and recovered in the hospital. (Did I mention Leah yet? Leah is my new, sweet niece! Stephanie and Greg's third kid. Baby Peterson #3. So I'm an Auntie^3! That's cubed, right? Sweet! She's super cute and apparently very cuddly and sweet-natured despite having bad jaundice and having to have major intestinal surgery while only a month old. I get to meet her during Halloween, when I go up for a visit to the Peterson household. I can't waaaaaaaiiiiittttt!!)
Anyway. So I've got the house to myself and I'm loving it. (Being an adult child at home is hard, y'all. In case you wondered.) So late one night I go to the kitchen for a snack, and out of the corner of my eye I see movement. Mouse movement, to be specific. There is a mouse on my countertop.
Two thought immediately go through my brain:
1. How incredibly appropriate is it that I JUST watched Ratatouille on TV yesterday?! I mean, what are the chances?!
2. I'm going to have to kill this thing, and that is the last thing I want to do.
The mouse and i lock eyes for a moment, both of us drowning in dread. I slowly take out my phone to snap a picture, and the mouse darts across the counter and jumps down behind the stove. I then send the following text message to my parents:
AQAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! THERE IS A MOUSE. A MOUSE. IN THE KITCHEN. IT JUST RAN BY ME ON THE COUNTER, THEN SAT DOWN NEXT TO THE KNIVES WHERE WE STARED AT EACH OTHER FOR A FEW MINUTES BUT WHEN I TRIED TO TAKE A PICTURE OF HI, HE DOVE BEHIND THE STOVE. THERE IS A MOUSE BEHIND THE STOVE AND I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT TO DO.
To which my Dad instantly called me, using soothing tones because there was nothing to be afraid of. Well, duh. Of course there was nothing to be AFRAID of. I wasn't afraid of a mouse. I was panicking. I was in panic mode because I knew I was going to have to man-up and kill it. And I didn't want to.
So Dad made arrangements with my dear Uncle Kevin to bring over some traps the next night-- some glue traps so "I wouldn't have to hear the snap of a regular one in the middle of the night." So we set them up, and two days later, there he is. I actually heard him first. He was in the trap underneath a cabinet, where I wasn't expecting him, so I just heard a desperate squeak squeak squeak to herald his presence. And there he was. Trapped lying on his side in the glue trap, desperately trying to free himself. I could see his muscles straining so hard as he tried to move.
Now, I had resigned myself to killing this mouse. I knew that it wasn't sanitary for him to live in our house, much less the kitchen. Ratatouille's remarkable timing be darned. That house had to go.
But when I saw him struggling like that, when I heard him squeaking, I realized this was the least humane thing I had ever done. I had to fix it. I had to free him. I took the trap outside, ran to our rose bushes, and tried to brush him off the trap with a broom. But it didn't work. The mouse was getting more frantic, and so was I. Diseases also be darned, I took hold of the mouse and proceeded to pull the thing off the trap.
But, dear goodness, those things are nothing like the various adhesive crafting products I've used. The substance coating the trap, the mouse, and now me was nuclear-strength military grade sludge for holding space crafts together. Billions of years from now, when all life and civilazition is long gone, that stuff will be utterly unchanged, chilling with the cockroaches. Somehow, I manage to get him free, although I was convinced I was going to rip his paw off at one point. But then I finally have to acknowledge the fact that he could never survive. He was coated in the stuff. I hadn't even gotten on the ground yet, and he was already coated in mulch. It didn't matter if he wasn't stuck to the trap, he would take the trap with him. He'd stick to the ground. To a bush. To himself.
I couldn't let him go.
So I stuck him back on the trap.
Do you realize how traumatizing this was? Do you? I think his nose got stuck in the glue that time, and I was glad. Now he would probably suffocate instead of the long grueling death of starvation, or frying in my trash can.
I fled to our trash bin outside, trying not to let it sink in what was happening, but most failing. I tried to fling the trap with the suffocating mouse into the can, but it was glued to my hand. He was literally suffocating at my hands.
It took half a Costco bottle of Canolla oil, nearly as much Dawn dish soap, and 10 minutes of scrubbing my hands with a dish scrubber to get the stuff off. The glue may be gone, but I can never regain my peace of mind.
Glue traps are the most evil contraptions we have invented. (In regards to pest control.) getting rid of unwelcome visitors is never fun. Removing opossums, skunks, bunnies, and yes, the stray mouse or two, doesn't always mean having to kill them. In fact, you should always try other ways first before resorting to killing them. Especially if they're outside, and just being a nuisance instead of a real health and safety hazard. But when the situation arises that you gotta kill that mouse USE THE SNAP TRAP. Yes it's loud. Yes it's scary. Yes it's disgusting and awful and violent. But it's over in a second. That mouse doesn't suffer. It's over before it realizes what's going down. But glue traps are the most awful things you could ever inflict upon an animal. It's like trapping them in their own tar pits and just letting them starve or whatever to death. How incredibly cruel. Yes, it's just a mouse. But if someone was exterminating ME, I'd hope they would have the decency to finish the job and not make me suffer.
Just saying.
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