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| #8 - Do Something I am Afraid Of |
I've never explained my fear of mice here on the DP in great detail before. I've briefly mentioned it before in several posts including Unity Road Writings - Pre-Show Butterflies. I've never liked the little critters for several reasons, and I absolutely hate anything dealing with them.
How the heck can a six foot - five inch grown man be afraid of such a tiny rodent?
I can understand the judgmental, and yes, I admit, logical reasoning behind that question. It is quite ridiculous.
However, as someone that has gone through grad school labs here is my reasoning on mice:
- Despite being blind, they are incredibly intelligent, which is why mice are experimented on so much.
- They have an insane amount of fast twitch muscles, which is the cause for their insane quickness.
- They carry many diseases that can be contagious by close proximity alone.
So with the facts of them being smart, fast, and dangerous, I hope you can now understand my cautious approach to mice.
Plus, I'm just afraid of them.
With that said, this past week while watching a fantastic thriller that was the first round of the NCAA tournament, somehow, someway, by the smallest of odds, a little critter raced across our dining area and behind our television.
Awesome.
I immediately followed the critter to its eventual vanishing. I then raced around our apartment at 1:30am to check every corner for possible openings where this slice of earthly annoyance could have entered.
Nothing.
The following night, I set the typical glue traps in the areas where I last saw the dastardly bit reek havoc on our happy home. With my knowledge, I placed a few sprinkles of the tag team partner's brownies on the trap as bait.
I figured, no creature can resist brownies. Especially, my wife's. Kudos to her.
Nonetheless, the next morning, I awoke to a frantic wife who made it seem as if Al Capone and his men just broke into our apartment looking for money we didn't have.
The hysteria and complete panic sounded like mumbled fuzziness as I attempted to shake off my slumber. After eventually coming to my senses, I simply heard a presidential-like statement from the tag-team partner:
"We got him"
*Cue your imaginary CNN special report here*
She then followed wth the question/task that sent my morning into what has become this post, "will you take care of it? Ughhh, I'm out of here!"
And soon as I heard ,"here" the door slammed shut.
It was now me and the stuck rodent.
Awesome.
As I closely examined the situation, I noticed the little guy was partially stuck, which of course, now left room for error.
What if it escaped?
What if it's not really stuck?
What if it has something?
What if all of this is a set-up, and part of a grand plan for his buddies to ambush me?
All of these thoughts ran through my head. And of course at this point, I'm wondering why the anesthetic that is on the glue trap hasn't killed it. I know for a fact that it should kill them. And in my years of experience, when it didn't work, I've seen my father crush these little buggers with his bare hands.
Me on the other hand. I don't have the guts at all do that.
No chance.
So as I get closer to get a better look to size up my enemy and plan my approach, I notice only the two hind legs were stuck, but as it felt my presence, it panicked, squealed, and tried to make a move thus placing the forefront legs onto the trap.
Still a bit hesitant, maybe still in negative thought of all the things that could go wrong, I quickly accessed a desktop computer we keep usable in our office area. Believe it or not, I googled, "How to kill a mouse on a glue trap"
Yeah, I know, I seriously did. You'd be surprised to know that it is actually suggested by the search engine as you begin typing.
So, I'm not the only one in America. Ha!
After reading, the general consensus was either to feed it poison, which was not at my disposal, or to crush it with a hard blunt object.
As cool as the second option may be, once again, I don't have the guts to crush a squealing field mouse that sat defenseless. Plus, I'm not sure if I wanted to clean up any potential mess that may come about. Not to mention, I needed to begin getting ready for work.
So instead, I decided to take another glue trap, and toss it on top of the little fear-inducing runt, hoping the added anesthetic would finally put it down.
So I peeled of the protective wrapped, and tossed the glue down - except, this was not my best toss. The falling glue trap hit the wall, and bounced off landing on the perpetrator, however, did not do so cleanly. I still accomplished my goal, except now the other half of the glue was on our hard wood floor - stuck.
Like I said, not my best toss at all.
Great. Now I know I have him and can easily dispose of him, except, now its stuck to our apartment. So I quickly rummaged through the tag-team partners drawers of arts, crafts, and various supplies for her scrap booking, and came away with a super hero-like and very manly weapon of destruction - a pink box cutter.
Oh yeah, didn't think this story could get any more pathetic, huh?
So with the little ounce of dignity and manhood I had left, I had a new plan of removing this field mouse sandwich that was stuck to our floor. I began box cutting the part that was attached to simply release it from the floor. My plan would be to worry about the stuck part later. However, after slicing through not just paper, but the unbelievably strong adhesive glue, the trap began to move violently with a loud shriek as the dinky little deviant made one last effort to shake lose.
Any brave, manly, tough guy would stay in there. I on other other hand dropped my pink box cutter and backed away.
Don't judge.
I also lost a rubber glove which became stuck to the trap as I was backing away.
Ummm yeah...
So after taking a quick twenty second timeout to grab a new pair of gloves and to rethink the plan of attack, I remained persistent, and got back to task after it's surge of adrenaline. Finally, I freed the two traps and what seemed like a now dead mouse in the middle. It was at this point I puffed my chest out and shook my head in cowardly cockiness, "hasta la vista, baby!"
As I bagged the petulant pest and dropped him down the shoot, I returned to remove the once roadblock of half a glue trap from the wood floor, and disinfected the entire area.
For the first time, I somehow got the best of my war with mice.
Did I overcome my fear?
Heck no. I still find them to be intelligent, fast, and dangerous. The ultimate villain to any super hero.
And I still hate to be around them.
However, for a few days, and one interesting morning, by default of having to be "the man of the house", I got on the board. Team Mouse: too many to count; D-Robo: 1.
Yeaaaaah booooyyyyy!
Now excuse me, I have to go wash the now infamous, pink box cutter.