Things you can catch with sticky paper...

Corey mentioned the "sticky paper incident" in response to my last post. I lost all my old emails in a catastrophic hard drive failure, so Corey was kind enough to forward the email back to me. I laughed reading it - I had totally forgotten about this story until Corey brought it up. So for those of you who are not familiar with this story, here it is for your amusement (names changed to protect the innocent):

From: Kevin
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 8:28 PM
Subject: The things you can catch with sticky paper...

Okay, so LW called and complained to our Terminix guy that we’ve been having a problem with crickets coming into our garage (among other things like ants in the basement). The Terminix guy came out and put these glue boards down in the corners of the garage that are just a piece of cardboard with sticky glue on them to catch bugs. Very low tech.

You’d be surprised what ELSE you can catch with those glue boards besides bugs…

First, yesterday (and I’m sorry I didn’t take a picture of this – I’m afraid you may think I’m making this up), YS (2 yrs old) goes outside to get in the car and starts screaming and crying hysterically. LW goes out to find out what’s wrong with YS, and the next thing I know, LW is screaming and crying and running back into the house carrying screaming and crying YS. I mean, they were both hysterical. I thought they had seen the Anti-Christ or witnessed the holocaust or something horrible and gruesome. All I got out of LW as she ran past me into the house was, “CHIPMUUUUNK!” So I go out to the garage expecting to find some bloody, gory, yucky carnage and mess. Um, no. What I found was this poor, innocent, cute little chipmunk… STUCK to the glue board and wiggling and writhing and trying to break himself free.

So I got a broom and started scooting him out of the corner of the garage to a point where I could pick up the board and carry him out to the front yard to free him. It suddenly dawned on LW that the Terminix guy told her if either of the kids got stuck to one of the boards, to use vegetable oil to get them off. So LW came running back out of the house with a jug of vegetable oil in her hand and proceeds to DOUSE the poor chipmunk with oil while I was holding the board about 3 feet up off the ground. The chipmunk broke loose and fell onto the concrete with a THUMP as he landed on his side. He quickly got himself upright and ran as fast as his little legs would carry him into the bushes looking like a very wet, slimy rat. Then LW felt bad for him being all covered in oil, so she got the hose and started spraying water into the bushes to try and wash off the poor chipmunk.

So that was our excitement for the day yesterday.

Today, I must commend my wife for her courage and intestinal fortitude. I was VERY impressed with the calm demeanor she maintained as she walked in the house and very quietly told me, “I think there’s a snake stuck to the glue board.” She had to say “snake” in a whisper, because at the mention of the word, ES will run screaming in terror up to his room, crying and hiding from the hideous beast that surely must be here because it wants to devour him.

THIS time, I took the camera with me (see attached). Sure enough, we managed to “catch” a small snake with our glue board. I held the board upside down over the driveway and sprayed him a little bit at a time with oil (thanks to Pampered Chef! – they make a cool oil-sprayer thing for spraying oil on cooking pans, etc), and the snake gradually came loose from the board as I sprayed down the length of his body. When he broke free, he slithered off into the bushes. It was raining though, so I didn’t worry about getting out the garden hose to wash him off.

I was wondering though… Do chipmunks eat bugs? I figure that is why we caught the snake – he wanted to eat all the tasty bugs stuck to the board. Not sure why we caught the chipmunk though. Oh, BTW – in the picture, you can see in the upper right hand corner where the chipmunk was trying to chew his way out of the glue board.

Anyway, LW made me throw away the glue board, so I’m sorry to say you won’t be getting any more installments of this adventure telling you WHAT ELSE you can catch with a glue board.

Kev

From: Kevin
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 2:22 PM
Subject: RE: The things you can catch with sticky paper...

Okay, so I lied. I told you there wouldn’t be any more installments in the “things you can catch with sticky paper” saga.

Silly me, there was more than ONE glue-board in the garage.

Know what else? Birds also like eating insects. Who knew?

I think Pampered Chef is missing a marketing venue for their oil spritzer thingy.

Kev