Nature Narrative: The Weasel in the Glue Trap (Very rough draft)

    It happened one June afternoon a few years ago, a weekend if I remember correctly. We were having a graduation party for my sister, Meghan, who had just finished a Business degree at the University of Washington. It was the first time many of her friends had been out to the house, so we had spent days cleaning and decorating. During the excavation, my father stumbled upon rat droppings in our attic. Being the man of action that he is, he called some exterminators to come out to our house and place traps. The exterminator who came out was a portly gentleman in his sixties that reminded me of the four star generals in bugs bunny cartoons. He had a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude and was meticulously thorough. By the end of the day, he had secured all different types of traps around the perimeter of our house. After he had finished, he was going over what he had done with my parents.  “Let’s see, we’ve got spring loaded traps in the attic and the garage, poison traps near the vents, glue traps near the garage doors…” “Woah, woah, wait, what’s a glue trap?” I chimed in. Being an animal lover, I had been hovering near the conversation to ensure that if rats were going to die they would at least go as humanely as possible. “Glue traps? Well, they um, they uh…” he said, trying to formulate his answer to a slightly more sensitive audience. “Well sweetheart, a glue trap is a really sticky surface, and when a rat walks onto it, it gets stuck and the more it struggles to get away the more stuck it gets, so it can’t get away,” Responding to the horrified expression on my face my mom adds, “Isn’t that a bit harsh? I mean, I want these things out of my house, but I don’t want to torture them.” Snapping back into four star general mode he quipped,  “Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. If you want these things out, I recommend we keep the glue traps.” After the Orkin man left, I begged my mom to take them out. The only comfort she could offer me was that I would understand someday when I had a house of my own. Though I sincerely doubted it, I was out of ammunition. So I let the issue go for a while and continued decorating for the party.

     The next day, we continued setting up for my sister’s party. Drinks went in the kitchen, badminton was set up outside and the ping pong table went in the garage. As I set up the garage, I couldn’t help but notice those blasted glue traps near the doors. I shook my head but continued setting up. Eventually, people start flooding in. I went upstairs and got ready as the party got started. Right as I was finishing up, I heard a scream come from the garage. I ran downstairs and as soon as I flung open the door to the garage I saw it; something had gotten stuck in the glue trap. Our first rat. Everyone was staring at it, looking confused.  “What is it?” asked one party- goer. As I got closer, I began to see that it wasn’t a rat at all. It was smaller and skinnier than a rat, with a much longer body. It was a light brown color with a cream colored stomach. It had a long, thick, furry tail with a black tip. In fact it looked a lot like my friend’s ferret. Oh my God, it was a weasel. But this wasn’t a fully matured weasel, this one was much too small. It was only a baby. It was thrashing wildly, trying desperately to free itself from the glue, but the more it flailed the more its little body was ensnared. I was horrified. My mom came out and looked down at the pathetic creature. “Aww, man, this is hard, Erin, let’s move it outside.”  She picked up one corner of the trap and moved it out onto the grass in the front yard. As soon as we got it outside, the party-goers went back to playing pong and having fun. Some little girls from the neighborhood were playing outside. I called them over to come see it. “Wow! It’s so cute!”, they exclaimed. Then one of them looked very serious and asked,  “Are you gonna be able to get it out?” Uh oh. “Yes, don’t worry, it’s going to be fine,” I said without thinking. My mother looked up at me as they ran off and said, “You shouldn’t have called them over here. They shouldn’t see something when its like this. There is no way we’re going to be able to get it out.” Then reality hit. “No way at all?” I asked. “No, I think its best that we just leave it out here and let nature take its course.” Silence.

    No, I thought, there had to be something we could do. So I went inside, grabbed a pair of gloves and came back out with a flat headed screw driver. I tried to wedge it under the weasel in such a way that would give it enough leverage to become unstuck. But this glue trap was something else. Imagine the stickiest, gooiest, most unforgiving substance you’ve ever encountered and triple it. This stuff wasn’t letting go. The more I tried to get the screwdriver underneath it, the more I realized how stuck this poor little guy was. I kept trying with the screw driver for another half hour, until finally my dad came back outside and told me it was time to let it go and to just let it pass in peace. He moved it to an area of the yard where we couldn’t see it, but I just started crying. Not seeing it wasn’t going to change the fact that it was dying. Then I had a stroke of brilliance. What was I doing? I’d watched enough animal cop shows to know that when you have an injured wild animal, you call someone who can do something about it. Not knowing where to start, I ran inside and called our vet.

   “Alpine Animal Hospital, how can I help you?” came the voice on the other end of the line. “Yeah, Hi, my name is Erin Roberts, our dogs Maddie and Indie are patients down there, well, I have kind of a weird call for you. My parents called an exterminator that came out and set glue traps in our garage and a baby weasel managed to get into one of them.”

  “A baby weasel? Wow, that’s not something you hear everyday, well you’re lucky. There is a hospital in Bellevue that will take wildlife, let me give you their number…”

    “Thank you!” Great, there was hope! I grabbed a sticky note, jotted the number down then called them as quick as I could.

     “Aerowood Animal Hospital, what is the nature of your emergency?”

  “Yeah, Hi, my name is Erin Roberts, got an unusual call for you…” I explained the situation.

   “A baby weasel? Well I’ll be darned, bring it in, we’ll see what we can do.”

  Yes! This thing didn’t have to die! At least not like this. If it came down to them not being able to save it, at least they could euthanize it humanely. I skipped triumphantly out to my father, still crouching next to the trap. “Dad! I just called the vet’s office! They told us to take it in!” He didn’t look up, he just said, “No, Erin, you don’t take a weasel to the vet.” I groaned aloud. I told him about the animal cops shows and the special hospital in Bellevue. He continued to look down at the weasel. It took several minutes of convincing, but he finally agreed to take the weasel in to make me feel better. So next came the tricky part. How were we going to transport this thing? We couldn’t just hold it, we might get bitten. The trap wouldn’t fit in an old mouse cage. So I ran inside and told my mom, and asked her if there was any way we could get it there safely. She thought for a minute, then went to the closet under the stairs. After a great deal of digging, she produced a small cat carrier we had around from my old cat. She suggested we put a few folded towels in and tried to brace the trap in such a way that it wouldn’t slide around. It wasn’t too long of a drive to Bellevue, probably about twenty minutes, but it was long enough, and hilly enough for concern. Then there was the matter of calming the animal enough to withstand the shock of transport. By this point, it looked like it had dislocated some of its joints struggling to get free, there was a serious risk of it dying from stress or exhaustion. We tried to give it some water out of an eye dropper, which it seemed to accept just fine, and that calmed it a bit. Then we slowly picked it up and placed it in the cat carrier. With it safely in the crate, we could finally get on our way. We loaded it into the trunk, started the car and we were off.            Then something hit us. We’d always been near the little guy outside, but the sudden introduction of an enclosed space made us realize how much he stunk, and boy did he ever reek. It was an overpowering odor that was slightly skunky, and smelled like a urinated-on pile of animal feces and rotting vegetation. We tried not to roll down the windows, afraid we’d scare him to death. Miraculously, we lasted about ten minutes, until we couldn’t take it anymore and rolled down the windows slightly. It helped, but the stench was still enough to make me nauseas and give me a terrible headache by the time we arrived at the animal hospital. My dad and I practically fell out of the car, gasping for fresh air. After we had composed ourselves, we got the crate out of the car and realized that we didn’t know which door we should use. Like most animal hospitals, this one had two entrances: one for cats, and one for dogs. Nowhere did we see a “small woodland rodents” entrance, so we settled on the cat one. When we got inside, I told the lady behind the desk that we were the people with the weasel. “Oh yes! We’ve all been expecting you, I can’t believe you caught a baby weasel! Let me go tell the vet.” Everyone in the waiting room glanced into the cage, trying to act disinterested. I set the cage on my lap so I could get a good look at him. The poor thing looked exhausted. His struggling had subsided into a malaise of slight twitches. His beautiful fluffy tail was now entwined in the glue. His tiny limbs were painfully twisted about in all directions. His little eyes were beginning to close slightly, and his breathing was labored and heavy. “Don’t worry little dude, we’re going to get you out of there soon,” I reassured.  About that time, the vet’s assistant came out into the lobby and announced “Alright, we’re ready for the… weasel? Is it really a weasel?”  I lifted up the cage so that she could see inside. “Oh my word, it’s a baby weasel. Well I’ll be darned. Alright, we’ll take him back now.”  She opened the crate and gently lifted the trap out. “Aw man, he’s really stuck in there isn’t he? Well, we’ll see what we can do.” I sat back down next to my father, who was looking slightly dejected. “You know they’re probably going to have to put him to sleep, right?” He asked. “I know, but I’m hoping there will be something they can do for him.”

   Then we waited. And waited. And waited, for what seemed like forever, but in reality was probably around fifteen minutes. Then the vet tech emerged from the back room, I stood up and I said, “did you get him?” She triumphantly held up the empty glue trap, still littered with pieces of fur from the weasel. “Yep, we got ‘im! We sedated him and then we used a razor blade to shave off the fur that was connecting him to the glue. Got him out of it pretty quick. Then we washed him thoroughly and put him in with out other wildlife. He should be coming to in about half an hour.” Success. Victory. Sweet, sweet victory. Then came the next hurdle, “so now what happens to him?”

“Well,” she said, “we work with a non-profit wildlife sanctuary up in Everett that takes in injured wildlife and rehabilitates it for release back into the wild. Hopefully in a few days we will be able to transport him up there where he can be evaluated, put with others of his kind and eventually released. He’s got a good shot, it looked like he hadn’t done too much damage to himself trying to get out.” Thank God. I turned and looked at my father, who looked absolutely shocked that they were able to dislodge him. “I think this belongs to you?” The vet tech asked, offering the trap to my dad.  He looked sheepish, and put the trap back into the crate.

    “I really wish you wouldn’t use these things. They’re downright cruel. At least spring loaded traps kill quickly, these ones just torture the poor critters to death. You’re lucky you caught that little guy in time, if he’d been there a few hours more, he’d be a goner for sure. I hope you learned something from this experience. We get wildlife stuck in these traps all the time,” she explained. “Yeah, well, we didn’t really fully agree with putting them in. I think we’ll remove them,” my dad said, looking embarrassed. “Awesome! Great to hear it! Now, we don’t require that people pay for emergency services provided to wildlife, but we do recommend a donation to the non-profit sanctuary where he’ll be going.”  My dad donated a marginal sum to the organization and we left, victoriously.

    “See dad? I told you they could help!” I said. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. I didn’t even know these kinds of organizations existed. Good thing you watch too much Animal Planet,” he said as we climbed back into the car. We rolled down the windows all the way home to get the stench out of the car. When we finally pulled back up to the house, I ran into the garage and proudly held up the empty trap. My sister and her friends all cheered. My parents collected the rest of the glue traps from around the garage and threw them away.

    I had impacted a lot that day. I not only saved a baby weasel, but I was able to educate my family and friends about what to do with injured wildlife. I was also able to help convince my parents that only humane methods of pest control should be used around our house. It was an overall very successful experience.