I have the tendency to leave dishes unwashed in my apartment for days and even over a week until I get around to washing them all. Some plates I leave out with stuff like sticky syrup on them for days.
Several nights ago I woke up to what sounded like scurrying and squeaking. I thought it was a mouse but it stopped and I fell back asleep, and the next morning there was nothing.
Last night, I come home and notice something on one of the syrupy plates. It's a dead mouse!
Well, I was about to just go to sleep and clean it up tomorrow when it's ear twitched. Ok, so it was still barely alive. Since it seemed to be moving feebly, I assumed it was nearly dead, and considered waiting for it to die before disposing of it. I also considered flushing it down the toilet.
But then it started wiggling more frantically and I could see it still had plenty of life and drive in it, and I couldn't stand to watch it slowly expire in a painful way, so I decided to try to free it (I still considered, briefly, flushing it down the toilet).
First off, I tried using a small screwdriver to try to pry the mouse out of the sticky syrup. This caused the mouse to squeak like crazy so I assumed I was causing it massive amounts of pain.
So I sat there and I wondered what would work to "unstick" the mouse. I considered WD-40 which I didn't have, Triflow which I did have but may be toxic to the mouse, and finally I remembered that the best way to get rid of sticky stuff on plates is dish detergent, of course. I was already outside far away from the house, so I went and got the detergent, poured it carefully around the mouse, and then sloshed the soap around so it got underneath the mouse.
First the legs got unstuck one by one, and then the chin and belly. The mouse was stuck by it's tail and attempted to run away amusingly with the tail still stuck. I put some soap on the tail and the mouse took off down a fence plank until it hit a vertical post and, not having anywhere to go, proceeded to paw at the post as if to dig through it. When I approached it ran off the edge of the board and to the ground where it ran away.
I better not see the mouse again, though, or
I'll feed him to my pet centipede. (vid)
