I wake up early feeling inclined to do something productive, which, I must say, always tends to be the case when I come home for breaks. Something about the permanency of this house or the belief that I am doing some deep for another without asking for something in return, it makes me want to clean it and decorate it and make changes that will surprise others when they arrive home. It was a rainy day with an oddly refreshing, unusually non-sticky breeze so I decided I would make the garage my project of the day. I spent a few hours placing tubs onto shelves, getting the empty Christmas decoration boxes all in one place for an easier repack after the holidays and finally, company came home, Alyssa- my little sister. She went inside, put something more comfortable on and helped me attack what was left of the garage. As we made a few last minute completions, I noticed something squirming on a black sticky pad. I immediately jumped back. It was a mouse! A small, meek looking mouse that was held into the stickiness his tiny padded feet, his creepy long tail and half of his poor, tiny face. My initial thought was that I would leave him but our conscience's got the best of us and we decided the little guy may still have a chance if we let him loose.
We then have the conversation of how to go about getting him off without direct physical contact and who actually got to do this dirty work. After a brief debate I decided I would have to do it. We got a boogie-board,(yes, like one that you take to the ocean), scooted the sticky pad out into the yard and picked another random object out of a nearby toolbox to peel this sucker off. Well, it was a lot tougher than it looked! There was much desperate squirming from the mouses end and much startled, twitches away on my end. Alyssa used a hammer to hold the pad against the boogie-board as I attempted to peel his face off of the pad. I freaked out a few times, or a lot...but Alyssa (from a comfortable distance) reassured me that he was only squirming in an attempt to help me free him, this made me feel slightly better, as a valuable member of a team striving toward the same goal instead of a hostage situation. Eventually, not kidding, after a good 15 minutes, his poor, sticky, slightly bloody head was freed, which I immediately regretted as his nibbling teeth nearly clenched my fingers in his frantic gnawing at the remainder of his firmly stuck body. I then started to release his feet, I was worried I would further injure him with the random unidentifiable object I was using in this process that the time lapsed slower than I can even recall, slower than ever. After what seemed like hours, his feet were free and we mentally prepared ourselves to run away as fast a possible with his sudden flee. As the mouse dropped to what I was betting, his freedom, he was caught by his thick, disgusting tail. I then had to saw through the stick (did I mention how remarkably sticky this stuff was, I mean, we couldn't get it off of our tools when we were finished! It was ridiculous!!!) As I finally got his tail freed, instead of running- our anticipated theory- he flopped onto the crisp green grass and stuck straight to it. I realized at this point, despite all of our truly sincere intentions to free this poor guy, nature was going to take its course.
I am personally grossed out, creeped out and slightly humored at that part of the day, though it was worth the effort because I probably wouldn't have been able to sleep at night knowing I left that poor helpless, harmless, squirmy creature to stick to death in a nicely organized garage. We decided we should carry him to the vacant neighboring homes yard, simply for a peace of mind. I wished him well and we threw that nasty sticky pad away to avoid any future situations.
Then Alyssa consoled me with stories about how it would rain and magically wash the stickiness from his now patchy body and he would be as good as new, completely disregarding the strength of stick or reality of the outcome, we went with it and didn't mention it again all day...until now.
"There is a presence of the dead among the living, I think of you but I have to put that memory away to move on, I have to let go, much like you did of this temporary holding." -The Lovely Bones
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