15 minute standoff

Mickey, my unoriginally named mouse, has been captured.

I discovered, unpleasantly by the way, that he has (note, I say has, rather than 'had'... he's not dead yet) a particular craving for the little packets of spices I kept in the kitchen drawer. So I grabbed one of the four glue traps strategically placed around my house, and put it in the drawer with the spices.

The next day I discovered he had ingeniously figured out that walking around the trap over to the spices was just as easy as walking over the trap to the spices. So I took all the spices out of the drawer, and was going to throw them away, when I noticed that he seemed to only nibble at all the packets except for the chicken gravy packet. I don't know what chicken gravy is exactly (except what the name says) I don't know why I have it, or how long it's travelled around with me, I don't know that I've ever eaten chicken with gravy on it, or that I would cook chicken with gravy on it. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure why I have any of the packets, since I don't cook. But that's beside the point.
Since Mick seemed to like the chicken gravy, I dumped some of the packet onto my glue trap, and threw everything else away.

And then I waited.

I went to church, and sure enough by the time I came home I heard his persistent "eeep" sounding from the drawer.

Thus began my 15 minute stand off.

You see, the instructions on the box show step 1: peel the two traps apart. Step 2: place them strategically around your home. Step 3: Once mouse is caught, pick up trap and put it in the trash.

Step 1 & 2 went down easily.

Step 3 had a problem.

I've never been a girly girl, but this was one of those situations I really don't do well with. If he'd been on the floor (rather than in my kitchen drawer) I would have grabbed a broom and beat the tar out of him until he stopped "eeeep"ing. But unfortunately, there he was sitting on my trap in a kitchen drawer that I would have felt foolish explaining why it had a broom sized hole in it. He was eeping at me and upon closer inspection I saw him literally trying to bite his way away from the glue.

That worried me.

Thoughts of shutting the drawer and coming back days later when I started to smell him decaying, vanished with the idea that this little beast might get away. So, I did the only thing I could think of to do.

I grabbed another glue trap, and tried to throw it on top of him so as to stick his other side as well, doubling his chances of not getting away. Unfortunately, I have horrible aim when my eyes are closed and I'm trying to prepare to run away (in case he suddenly has one of those miracle moments people talk about where when in a desperate situation you receive unnatural strength. It could happen.) So my aim only got me his bottom half covered. Leaving me looking at his little head.

He was almost cute.

Almost.

Feeling slightly more confident, with his bottom half stuck firmly to two separate traps, I then took the final step.

I got a third trap and stuck it firmly to his head. Now I couldn't see him at all... this was progress. But I still didn't want to touch the trap.

I grabbed a wad of paper towels and *finally!* attempted to pick up the trap only to hear the little booger "eeep" at me. Instinctively I dropped the trap and backed away glaring at my eeping mound of glue traps. Finally, simply staring at the drawer I took a moment to call myself a few names, making perfectly clear that I was being a complete sissy about all this. When I reached the point of calling myself a scaredy cat, I realized that I wasn't even as good as a scaredy cat, because.. even a scaredy cat would have offed this little grey monster by now.

SO, running out of options, I went to another drawer and grabbed a long set of tongs, slid it around the paper towels, held my breath, made a really bad face, and shoved the whole assortment of objects into the waiting trash bag. Quickly tied several several knots, and made it outside to the trash can.

I concede that I'm a chicken, but at least I got the job done.

Next time, I think I'll just move.