I'm A Horrible Person

I don't know what I was thinking but I set up some of the glue traps last night.

We hadn't caught a mouse since January and I knew the little bugger that resulted in a wasted cake and an extra round of dish washing was still lurking around. I knew this even despite the fact that there was no evidence of rummaging in any of my dry goods (I swear I've been checking my cabinets every day.)

My mistake was setting up the traps on one of the nights that Andrew isn't at my place.

I woke up this morning and the traps (all six) were empty. "Oh well," I thought to myself, "the glue traps don't work either."

That was before I baked cookies tonight. We're heading to a friend's place for a potluck dinner on Saturday and since I wanted to bring a trifle and cookies, I decided to get a head start on the cookies earlier in the week.

I had the cookies cooling on top of my stove (if you've seen my kitchen, my stove is right next to the my oven and is the logical resting place for hot cookie sheets) but as I was walking out the door to run an errand, I decided not to risk leaving them out in the open where the mouse had visited before. Good thing I did move them.

I was talking with my 87 year old Grandmother on the phone when I got home. All of my mouse traps are out in the open on the kitchen floor except for one that I stuck in the cupboard below my stove where we believe the mice have been living. I open the cupboard and to my shock, there's a wriggling mouse stuck on that glue trap. I yell out in surprise, mind you, while still on the phone with my Grandma. I apologize, get off the phone and immediately call Andrew to complain that he's not here to help me deal with it. He predictably (and it's very irritating when he's right) points out that I was the one that made the decision to put out traps while he was gone.

The part that's getting to me is how inhumane the glue trap is. I rationalized the glue traps initially because they are supposed to have an anesthetic that makes the death painless. But I'm telling you that it will be hard to go to sleep tonight thinking of that mouse struggling on the trap. It's cute, wide-open eyes were almost closed in exhaustion and I swear it looked like it was crying. Andrew talked me out of putting some rat poison next to it (as in, you don't know what a desperate mouse will do to you if you come close to it).

All I know is that the boxes for the glue boxes lied. That mouse was in pain, and as much as I wanted it dead, I didn't want it to die like that. Weird logic, I know.

So tomorrow, I'm getting rid of the other glue traps. Andrew and I will have to find a new mouse trap and new type of bait to get rid of any other pests.