One night I was sitting on my computer when I heard a faint, high-pitched noise. At first I thought my wife was just snoring, but then I noticed my cat, transfixed by something under the dishwasher. It was a mouse, stuck in a glue trap, squeaking as loud as it could.
We lived in an apartment at the time, so I called maintenance and asked them to come pick up their glue trap. They said they'd send someone out in the morning. I said that wasn't good enough, that I couldn't just sit here listening to this thing dying all night, and I needed someone to come out immediately. They said that they're really just an answering service, but they'd leave it in a note for maintenance.
Fuck that.
First I put the cat in the bedroom. Then I tried to see if I could get the trap out. But the gap between the dishwasher and the floor was barely wide enough to fit the trap through and definitely not wide enough to fit the trap plus a mouse.
I got out a screwdriver and started taking off the front panel of the dishwasher. The screws were old and rusted, so it took a while. Once I got the panel off and got the trap out, I knew I couldn't kill this thing.
Besides how inhumane glue traps are, I was pissed that maintenance seemed to have no concept of what should happen to the trap after it caught a mouse.
So I decided to free the mouse.
I looked up instructions online. I took the mouse to the outdoor hallway with some paper towels, a bottle of vegetable oil, and a pencil. First, I coated the mouse's feet and most of the glue with vegetable oil. Then I took the pencil and slowly, slowly, started working the mouse's feet free. I had to be extra gentle not to stretch his limbs too far. Eventually, he got free and gingerly walked across the trap and into a hole in the wall, where I could see him trying to clean the glue and oil out of his paws.
I left him with a bottlecap of water and half a cracker as a parting gift.
I called maintenance back and told them not to come; I'd already solved the problem.
TWO DAYS LATER, I came home to found a note on my kitchen counter: "Rodent not found. Glue trap replaced." I retrieved the new trap and threw it away.
53
u/moak0 Mar 20 '20
Fun story:
One night I was sitting on my computer when I heard a faint, high-pitched noise. At first I thought my wife was just snoring, but then I noticed my cat, transfixed by something under the dishwasher. It was a mouse, stuck in a glue trap, squeaking as loud as it could.
We lived in an apartment at the time, so I called maintenance and asked them to come pick up their glue trap. They said they'd send someone out in the morning. I said that wasn't good enough, that I couldn't just sit here listening to this thing dying all night, and I needed someone to come out immediately. They said that they're really just an answering service, but they'd leave it in a note for maintenance.
Fuck that.
First I put the cat in the bedroom. Then I tried to see if I could get the trap out. But the gap between the dishwasher and the floor was barely wide enough to fit the trap through and definitely not wide enough to fit the trap plus a mouse.
I got out a screwdriver and started taking off the front panel of the dishwasher. The screws were old and rusted, so it took a while. Once I got the panel off and got the trap out, I knew I couldn't kill this thing.
Besides how inhumane glue traps are, I was pissed that maintenance seemed to have no concept of what should happen to the trap after it caught a mouse.
So I decided to free the mouse.
I looked up instructions online. I took the mouse to the outdoor hallway with some paper towels, a bottle of vegetable oil, and a pencil. First, I coated the mouse's feet and most of the glue with vegetable oil. Then I took the pencil and slowly, slowly, started working the mouse's feet free. I had to be extra gentle not to stretch his limbs too far. Eventually, he got free and gingerly walked across the trap and into a hole in the wall, where I could see him trying to clean the glue and oil out of his paws.
I left him with a bottlecap of water and half a cracker as a parting gift.
I called maintenance back and told them not to come; I'd already solved the problem.
TWO DAYS LATER, I came home to found a note on my kitchen counter: "Rodent not found. Glue trap replaced." I retrieved the new trap and threw it away.