There's no quick or easy way to clean up a broken bottle of maple syrup. The full glass bottle slipped out of its perch in the fridge and shattered on the hard kitchen floor, almost in slow motion. My first reaction upon seeing the sticky pointy superhero of a mess was to abandon all my possessions and move immediately to a new apartment. After seriously considering that for a few seconds, I then decided to leave it for the ants. I currently have no ants in my apartment, but I'm sure a big puddle of liquid sugar in the middle of the kitchen floor is just the thing to attract some.
Another couple of minutes passed before I decided the ants perhaps weren't the best solution. So out came the dustpan, hand-broom, bucket, and mop. Fifteen minutes later, instead of a small area on the floor being sticky, pretty much everything in the apartment was. Clothes went into the hamper and my person into the shower. And this was all in the middle of making dinner, for which I had been hungry for an hour and a half previous to the breakage. Thank God it wasn't pancakes on the menu.