Tales of mice and fingernails

First off, just so you know, the two headline words aren't actually related. That said, on to the mouse.

The mouse: All the basement dumping done by our boys made the place quite inviting to a small rodent in search of food. After a couple of brief sightings and a couple of discovered hide outs, I decided to try a glue trap I found at the store. The mouse conveniently showed itself long enough for me to see it dash behind a shelf. So, I set a couple of the glue coated papers down by the shelf and waited. That evening after a few hours had passed and the kids had gone to bed, I proudly showed Dan the very stuck (and very scared) little critter. It was cute, and so when he suggested it might be fun to try to cage it (since mice are allowed pets here), I understood. The makeshift cage he constructed of plastic bins and odds and ends was impressive. There was just one problem: how to get the mouse off the glue. Thinking outside the box, Dan grabbed some WD40 and squirted a little on the stuck parts. It worked a little too well, and the mouse was loose in a plastic bin with little holes along the sides just right for a mouse to wrap it's little feet around. When I tried to get it out, it jumped clear of the cage and dashd under another shelf. It felt like a typical sitcom ending, where despite all the action, we were pretty much right back where we started out. Almost: The mouse was stuck on that glue paper for an hour or more while we worked on the cage and the unsticking, and who knows how long before that. It lost a fair amount of fur in its struggles, and was thoroughly traumatized by the time it escaped. We haven't heard from him since.

Fingernails: A couple of months ago, a can and a hangnail joined forces to give me a nasty infection in my thumb. The infection went away with a little help from the doctor, but I still had an oddly broken fingernail. As it's grown out, it's gotten more and more snag prone, with painful results when snagging occurs. Dan recommended a nail strengthener, so last night I got one and applied several coats to create an artificially solid nail. It's been working, thank goodness, but it leaves me wondering what my edge-of-finger nail line will look like. I already have a funny nail line on another finger on that hand from an incident at a gas station a couple of years ago. Maybe it's time to start using the other hand more . . .