the mouse

[thehefner]

God, I never thought this icon would be so appropriate for such a horrible, miserable reason.



So it was a slow day at the comic store today. Very few customers, which was great when someone like fragmentedsky drops in to hang out and ply me with Lebanese pastries. We talk for, what, an hour or something, during which time we get one, maybe two customers.

Anyway, I cast my eyes toward the center of the store, where the new and recent issues are shelved, and I see a bit of white paper something on the floor. Trash, I assume. But then, an instant later, I see something else. At second thought, I think, no, no, that's just a piece of tissue paper or something, that's what's making that movement.

But I was right the first time. It was a tiny little gray mouse.

Turns out the white thing was a sticky mouse trap. And the mouse's tail is stuck.

Now, we don't have any mouse traps, much less any mice that I've ever seen in all my years. Best as I can figure, somebody dropped the trap with with stuck mouse in the store. Why?! I have no fucking CLUE!!!

Well, I'm already very concerned, wanting to release the mouse and put it outside. But I'm afraid to personally, y'know, touch it, and I try to ease it into a bag or something... shit, I don't even know what I'm trying to do... and as I've thought about this all day since, over and over and over again, I keep thinking how it was just the tail that was stuck. How I could have just hung it upside down so it dangled, where it couldn't have bitten me, and unstuck the tail. And it would have been free. Oh sure, there are alley cats outside who'd probably get it, or any of the other natural cruelties of the world, but still... it would have been free.

But it ran from me, of course. With no other shelter, of course, it rant right into the trap. I tried to get it loose outside, leaving fragmentedsky to watch the store (you better not have stolen all my Joss Whedon X-Men trades!), and head out to the backyard. And I'm trying to pull its legs free, but... you already know where this is going.

Ironically, the only thing I was able to free was the tail.

Sigh.

And of course, the poor thing is terrified, and after much of my attempts to tear its whole foot from the glue, it bites me. A good, sustained clamp on my left index finger. No broken skin, far as I can tell. I washed it repeatedly afterward and doused both hands in Purell. But I tell you, I felt that bite all day. I can still kinda feel it, hinting away whenever I brush that finger against something.

I hate those traps. The thought of starving to death, terrifying out of your brain... even for vermin, that's just... it's just horrible. And I hated, I hated, that I knew what I had to do. Poor fucking thing.

I came back into the store with tears mounting. Probably the only reason I didn't start sobbing was due solely to fragmentedsky's amazing abilities to distract me with geekery and goofiness, for which I was greatly appreciative.

But the whole rest of my day was ruined. And what I just can't wrap my brains around is how the hell it happened in the first place. How did it get there? Did someone leave it? If so, why? Did they not have the guts to do what needed to be done, and left it to me?

I don't have anything meaningful or illumination with which I can wrap this post. That's what's so maddening about the whole thing. It's a miserable, horrible little bit of cruelty and sadness, and I just don't quite get how it happened.

Comments

[musyc]

Ayi-yi-yi. There's a reason I hate traps like that. My sympathies.

[angrylemur.livejournal.com]

Jesus christ, that's awful. I'm sorry that happened to you.

You handled it better than I would have, although I know that's not much of a consolation.

[katenesswac.livejournal.com]

We have a mouse problem in our house and I've really not been wanting to use inhumane traps, but they simply won't touch the live catch ones (we're talking for weeks). I won't get the sticky ones because they're horrible, but we had to get the snap traps to try (which they haven't touched yet either. Smart little buggers). I wish I didn't have to be so cruel, but they're eating my clothes, and I don't want them to start living in my couch. Anyway, I read somewhere on the internet that you can free a mouse from a sticky trap if need be by dousing the sticky bit with olive oil. I'm not sure if it works if they've been stuck for a long time or if they just got stuck, but, it's worth a try if you ever run into the problem again.

[suburbfabulous.livejournal.com]

Baby oil works.
Are you using the no-bait Tom & Jerrys, or just the wood-and-wire ones? If you put peanut butter on a wood-and-wire, it should work like magic.

[entropicalia.livejournal.com]

Don't encourage that! Jesus.

Peanut butter surely works just as well in the live catch traps.

[suburbfabulous.livejournal.com]

The question was not "why"; it was "how."

[suburbfabulous.livejournal.com]

Not that I expect this to become a persistent issue, but if you do, keep a bottle of baby oil in the store's bathroom (assuming you have one. We did, but we were far ahead of the curve, especially in terms of investment speculation and bartering with the neighboring Subway.)
Baby oil dissolves the glue, you see. We learned that as the result of having children and glue traps in the same house.
I suspect Clancy. Somebody leaked your plan, and this is a warning.
Well, that just ramped this up, no?

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

I'll keep that in mind next time that bastard Clancy tries something like this. Ohhh, I'm going to futilely attempt to kiss his sister's elbow SO hard...!

[suburbfabulous.livejournal.com]

Wait till he's drunk, then jam a glue trap down his pants.
Use the ones with anesthetic.
Trust me. It's a party.

[fragmentedsky.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about it all day, too. What we should have done to avoid the final result (perhaps pushed the trap down, not enough to stick together because then the tail would be done for, but enough so that the mouse couldn't have gotten back inside) and such. But it wasn't just running from you - I was right there leaning over it, too.

There's a reason I didn't ask for details concerning its actual fate. I couldn't have hacked it. I'm one of those girls who thinks getting a guy to kill a spider in the bathtub for you is sissy-ass bullshit (although the ladybugs get put out the window) and I can do it myself, thanks very much, but that...coward that I am, I couldn't have handled it the way you did. I probably would if I had to, as opposed to dropping it in some other guy's freaking comic book store, but I would have been a literal mess the rest of the day and, then again, I wouldn't have used a trap like that in the first place. You may have noticed that when I'm upset and trying to avoid it I babble or go quiet by turns. It was just so tiny. The tears came later on, if that's any comfort; I was mostly concerned that I came across as some sort of cold-hearted bozo at the time instead of trying to help.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Yeah. We came pretty close to just sobbing together in the comic store there, didn't we?

We need a redo to that day. Possibly with added Batman.

[entropicalia.livejournal.com]

Oh no!!

I fucking hate those traps, too. There are so many more humane options. Christ.

At least you tried to help it, though. Gah, being a mouse-owner, this is just making me so sick. They're such precious, harmless little creatures. I can't imagine why someone would have done that. Fucked right up.

[kagome654.livejournal.com]

That's pretty awful, a very sad and frustrating situation. A lot of people wouldn't have cared about the fate of one little mouse and probably would have tossed the poor critter outside, trap and all, without caring what happened to it. Thank you so much for being one of the good guys, even though it sometimes hurts (especially when you second guess yourself). I'm sorry your day was ruined by someone else's callous (and pretty bizarre) actions.

[little-dinosaur.livejournal.com]

Oh no. That'll ruin your day.
Animal-cruelty-free hug! (And just to note, I know it feels like crap, but what you did was the opposite of cruel.)

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Oh, I realize that. I just meant the cruelty of the trap itself, and I just needed a short one-liner way of warning people.

[gore-whore-5.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you had to go through that, dear. Maybe if you can get your hand on a single rose, you can put it by the mouse's remains (if they're still there, or even in an accessible place) the way you did for the bird.

My mom and step-dad used the sticky traps when we had a mouse problem. I was never around when they dealt with the mice, but I obliviously cleaned their killing instrument while doing the dishes one night, and when they told me what I had cleaned I almost threw up. Stupid sticky traps. Motherfuckers.

[jellied.livejournal.com]

Who deposits a mouse in the middle of your store?

I'm lucky that all we have is the occasional, stray bug who decides to sneak in whenever I'm vacuuming.

[spacechild.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, man. That really sucks, and I have nothing better to offer than to say that you did what you had to do.