Glue Trap Vigil

[emel.scott]

The box says: WARNING!
attempting to remove will result
in body parts being torn off.

[Trapside...hour 9]

Not languishing with its family
under the sink sipping Raid cool-aid
or made thinner than nature intended
by my shoe or rolled up magazine.

Not on its back sunbathing at Bernie’s
dark glasses on, feet pointing straight up.
Not dead, or in pain...just frustrated.
Body undulating like a dancer
with its shoes nailed to the floor.

Under its little brown, surfboard-like shell
I count six legs and one antenna, caught fast.
One last appendage, a whisper of an aerial
waving about like a maestro’s baton...conducting
as I read to it from Tennyson’s Ulysses.

[joel]

...time to renew my PETA membership...

(... ...)

...seriously, it takes something powerful to lift up sympathy for a furless thing about to die. Photos of an ivory-robbed grandma elephant aren't nearly so heartbreaking as a nature special about its grandcalf dying of thirst in an African drought. And a mouse on a stickplate would be easily more sympathetic than a bug...and yet....

The image of the little critter trying to live, waving its antenna (I can't spell today...that looks funny) in an artistic response to life and Ulysses: brilliant.

My vegetarian soul bleeds and, really, time to re-up with the petes.

[emel.scott]

Thanks Joel,

I'm a card carrying carnivore myself (and proud of it) but frankly, I prefer the quick, clean kill. "dead before the pain hits their brain" I say. My recent experience with these traps only confirms a stanza I cut out of this poem...

The guillotine must be relief
for the head which sees
only a basket in its future

BTW I won some PETA underwear at a vegan holiday party a friend invited me to. This ol' side a beef wouldn't be caught dead wearing 'em so if you re-up, let me know and they're yours. ~

[joel]

Underwear? Who says I wear any?

[emel.scott]

always suspected some of you guys were naked under those robes

[joel]

I don't wear my clerics too often, suppose
the thought of the night from my head to my toes
is too dimly drawn
while closer to dawn
is what I would rather with skin for my clothes.

[emel.scott]

now that would make for an enlightening sermon
pass the plate the rev is short his endowment

[mindbum]

i had a similar experience recently with flypaper.
it's a little horrifying. not quite as bad as mice. oh how i prefer the quick kill. bb gun or can o sardines.

bravo.