It's More Like Sucking the Thumbs

It’s more like sucking the thumbs, that thought burst
through from no particular place. The left foot had gone
to sleep hours before and was just now feeling a blood
rush begin to creep. Most of us knew all hell would let fly
when it happened. Meanwhile that thought, “It’s more like sucking

the thumbs,” continued to thrum. I shifted, coiled my twirl tighter
and pressed—There was no sense or flavors just texture and heat
wet, a warm slime mixed with gravel it condensed on my insides
as I expanded in girth. Well ! I never suffered the way the others did.
My life was always the same. Even while growing in a bizarre place.

Dr. Cockles had in the last years been overcome with anxiety
and had to stop going on away raids. Basket cases are interwoven
he theorized and tended to fall apart in the rain. The thumb needs
a warm place in such circumstances,
and warms the cockles of your heart when done right.

I have been busy with a great little device called “The clever mouse trap.” It's winter here or soon will be, for the mice are moving inside, that’s why I bought the clever mouse trap. I needed to get a little rodent out of my kitchen and not wanting to kill it I whooped when I saw “The clever mouse trap."

On reading the instructions I was surprised to learn it is baited with nothing other than peanut paste with instructions on how to catch the small life forms and set them free unharmed seemed very straight-forward. As long as the mice are not peanut intolerant I felt happy with my $1.50 investment that I would not be a mousey killer.

That first night I was shocked when not one but six were trapped. I took them up to the back of the property to set them free; the next day four more. Strange how they all looked the same, and as time went on, one after another seemed to grow more forward I sensed a glint of anger when I opened the lid and found one near the top squeaking at me. It got so I wasn’t sure if it were the same one, or I had a colony under the floor boards. So I gathered up some dry leaves and put them in a large plastic bin with a lid. Number one was caught and in it went; it never liked the peanut butter and water melon, that I gave as supper. But alas it spent the night alone, because I didn't catch another one last night.

This morning after I had dropped blue food dye on its head I set it free. So far it has beat me back in four times and I’m out of peanut butter; it really is a very clever mouse trap that I am in.

Copyright © 2006 Joan McCormick