Murphy's Mouse~

*Warning!* graphically icky- do NOT read if squeamish, eating breakfast or easily disturbed. Just run off and be glad you are not me.....

SO, back to dead mouse story. Come home after work- and side trip to Wal-mart for Ozuim, which is this expensive spray that supposedly kills-all-smells (they use it in the icker places in hospitals, funeral homes)... of course, it lasts for one second then back to regular dead mouse oder. ew ew ew. I turn on the exhaust fan, turn on the ac (thinking to circulate the air) sit back and *try* to concentrate. Charles came over, wouldn't even let him inside it stank so bad.... vowed that I would get up first thing in the morning and- despite papers to write, finals to complete- go on a full-on-offensive dead-mouse-hunt.

Later, I'm happily avoiding working by surfing around the internet, when I smell a slightly different offensive smell. This is more like a on-fire smell, so I assume the exhaust fan is overheating. Turn it off...notice smoke ... blow out candle. Smell is worse, and there is smoke with no candle...slight popping/staticy noise... huh. Stove hasn't been on in days..... huh. To be on the safe side, I flip the breaker- sure enough the noise stops. OK. Look under the stove top again, nothing. GOOD GOD the smell is WORSE!!!! how can this be possible????? (I am not being theatrical. Max is doing his gagging thing and they are whining to be let out. Out they go)

I move the stove out away from the wall, sure this time that dead-mouse is in the outlet, like the last one. No.... there is this disgusting PUDDLE of fresh...ew.... mouse blood and decayed innards. Clean it up, notice a trail leading to the pushed out stove...(Thank-you CSI for my crime-scene skills).... re look all over/in stove. The blasted thing is INSIDE the motor or heater or whatever you call it. The sealed in part... think, oh. ok. Will deal with this is am.

This morning there is ANOTHER puddle of ew dripping down, the smell is a thousand times worse, I don't know how to take off the back of the stove, thinking that their is mouse-hell in there... they apparently crawled up into a nice cozy mouse condo... then somebody chewed something and Apocalypse Mouse. There might be hundreds of thousands of millions of roasted mousies in there. There is NO WAY I am opening that.

So what do I do? (Suggestions please!) Option one is somehow opening that, cleaning out the ew. I'm pretty tough, I could take it...but it wouldn't be pleasant. Option two is ditching the stove. Tempting, as I never cook anyway, and the whole burning-smell thing isn't a good omen as far as stove-safety goes, as well as the ew factor for cooking in a mouse-a-torium. ... but ... that means that eventually I will have to buy a new stove. doable but not-on-the-agenda money wise (since last fall I have had to replace the vacuum cleaner, rug cleaner, washer, lawnmower-twice, dvd player and computer) Third option is to do nothing, not use the stove and hope stinky mouse smell goes away. While this is the laziest option, I do like to breathe and gee whiz kids, I don't want to be known as the teacher-who-smells-funny (I'm imagining the scent seeping into my skin even as I type.) The horror! The agony! The EW EW EW EW WHAT DO I DO?

At the very least, Stove goes OUTSIDE today. (and no, I'm not going to ask Charles to help. You don't ask someone that you are creating boundaries with to rescue you at every turn. I don't need any nights in shining armor, just a ton of disinfectant and a new stove).