Glue and me

I didn’t need to look down at my feet to know what had just happened. There’s no sensation more distinct, or worse, maybe, than being stuck—not the stuck-at-the-train-station-because-my-friend-forgot-to-pick-me-up stuck. The sticky kind of stuck.

The day before, I had arrived home to find evidence of two horrible pieces of information:
1. someone had been in my apartment.
2. my building has a rodent problem.

The evidence was four MouseCatcher sticky pads placed throughout my apartment, mostly in the kitchen and bathroom, and one mysterious black box with a hole in it, wedged between my refrigerator and cupboards, which I guessed was placed there for the same reason as the adhesive sheets. Other than a shudder that I might have to find these pads occupied some day, I didn’t yet think too much of these methods of rat-killing.

Sure enough, while rushing to grab a glass of water during a commercial break from "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" a day later, my bare foot made contact with one of these pads. After a moment of panic that I was going to lose a 3 x 4 rectangle of skin, I discovered that these things peeled off of human skin without too much trouble. “Hmm, I hope that mice stick better to these than I do!” I thought.

As I imagined some little mongrel immobilized on my kitchen floor, I began to realize what a horrible way to die this would be: starving to death, unable to understand why your feet just wouldn’t move from the floor, maybe with a corn flake just inches away. I feel panic and terror when I wake up with a numb arm, and I can explain that feeling. Suddenly this seemed the most inhumane way to kill a creature, albeit an unwanted roommate.

I reluctantly placed the sticky pad back under my sink, thinking how the old-school spring traps, a quick blow to the neck as you taste your last meal of cheese, were a much more humane option to intruding mice. “Yet,” I thought, slipping on flip-flops, “Not quite as humane to my toes.”