Last Tuesday and Wednesday, before Thanksgiving, there was a horrid smell in our kitchen--like something rotting--and it seemed to come from the refrigerator or pantry area. (I know, horrible thought.)
As we tried to figure out what the smell might be, I remembered the way Abbi had been acting a few weeks earlier. Staring intently at the space under the fridge, ready to pounce there if she could. A sure sign that we had a mouse. When I saw her behave like that I moved the refrigerator out, cleaned underneath it and left some mouse poison there.
None of this is anything new; every fall mice come into the house. When Abbi starts acting funny I put poison under the fridge and under the stove--where our pets and kids can't get at it. After a little while I might find a mummified mouse or two (in our dry, desert climate the mice just dry up). And then I make Bruce dispose of the little corpses. Not nice, but no big deal, and never smelly.
Well, back to the big stink.
I figured a mouse must have died underneath the fridge. So Tuesday I pulled the fridge out again and, sure enough, as I moved it the smell got stronger. Yuck! But, there was no mouse to be seen! I swept and cleaned out the space and put the fridge back. And it seemed a little better for a while. But the next morning it was worse than ever.
We were super busy cooking for Thanksgiving all day Wednesday, and cleaning the house, but Bruce took another look. Nothing to be seen; we weren't really sure what to do about it. A mysterious, vile odor that came from an invisible source near the refrigerator. Then that night I thought perhaps a mouse had crawled into the refrigerator coils and died in there. Not a pleasant thought at all--how on earth would we find it, let alone get rid of it?
Well Thursday was Thanksgiving Day, and we spent most of the day at my in-laws' house. It would have to wait until Friday.
First thing Friday morning Bruce and I got up and went straight to the fridge. He pulled it out again and removed all the back panels that could be removed. Oh the stench! We thought we'd throw up. He started vacuuming out some major dust-bunnies, and kept his eyes open for a dead mouse.
And he found it. The refrigerator coils are about an inch off of the floor, and right above the coils there's a metal tray--probably there to catch any extra condensation. And in the corner of the tray, about nine to twelve inches in from the back of the fridge--and just out of reach--was a dead mouse lying in a puddle of water. OK. It's making me sick to write about it.
Well, Bruce couldn't get his hand in there to move it out. We couldn't vacuum it out. No, it had to be my smaller and more dextrous hand. So I tied a bandana around my nose and mouth--which lessened the smell considerably--and tried several tools to get the nasty thing out. (The "tools" were mostly long sticks, but they were too thick to do any good. At one point I did get desperate enough to wrap my hand in lots of plastic and try to just grab it out. But I couldn't quite reach it--which didn't break my heart.) Finally, after lots of prodding it around, we realized that even though it's body would move, the tail (which was even farther back, where we couldn't see it) was stuck to the tray.
I had been trying to lift it out with a bamboo skewer (no, I did not stab at it. Ugh! How gross!). And every time I touched it, some of it's fur would scrape off. So it looked like a pinkish-gray; slightly translucent slug; and it was totally limp like Frieda's cat. (Frieda is the Peanuts character with the "naturally curly hair" and the cat that just hangs over her shoulder.) Everything I tried to get it out would twist it or turn it until it's nasty little body was twisted halfway round. This job was so repulsive that I was shaking. At one point I'd put down the skewer to try something else, and when I picked it up again I grabbed the wrong end and got slimy mouse fur on my hand. Is there a word, or even a sound, for how disgusting that is?
Finally I got a second skewer--a metal one this time, with a loop on one end--and while I used the bamboo skewer to hold the body down, I used the metal loop to scrape the tail loose. At last the mouse was free. I could now scoop it up with one skewer while I used the other to steady it. I got it all the way out of the fridge, dropped it on a waiting pile of old plastic bags, and then wrapped all of it--the mouse and both skewers--in several plastic bags, which Bruce promptly took out to the trash. (Fortunately the garbage truck hadn't come around yet, and we wouldn't have to live with that thing rotting in our trash can for another week.)
When my foul chore was done, and the mouse was safely out of sight, I went and scrubbed--and scrubbed and scrubbed--my hands. Then I prepared a bleach solution for Bruce to use to clean up the condensation tray; I was not sad when I spilled bleach on my hands. While Bruce sprayed bleach into the tray and vacuumed it out with our small wet-dry vac (several times) I worked on other things in my room, wanting to cry the whole time.
Even though the stench was gone, I couldn't bear to eat anything in that kitchen; we had plenty of good food in the kitchen that Friday, but I was starving. All day long I had visions of slimy, limp, hairless, dead mouse dancing in my head. The whole morning was so upsetting that I couldn't even blog about it that evening.
By Saturday I thought I was over it, but cooking dinner almost made me gag that night. Today I'm doing OK. But thinking about it and writing about it is . . . sickening.
Oh! Will this trauma burn in my mind forever?
Well, Bruce couldn't get his hand in there to move it out. We couldn't vacuum it out. No, it had to be my smaller and more dextrous hand. So I tied a bandana around my nose and mouth--which lessened the smell considerably--and tried several tools to get the nasty thing out. (The "tools" were mostly long sticks, but they were too thick to do any good. At one point I did get desperate enough to wrap my hand in lots of plastic and try to just grab it out. But I couldn't quite reach it--which didn't break my heart.) Finally, after lots of prodding it around, we realized that even though it's body would move, the tail (which was even farther back, where we couldn't see it) was stuck to the tray.
I had been trying to lift it out with a bamboo skewer (no, I did not stab at it. Ugh! How gross!). And every time I touched it, some of it's fur would scrape off. So it looked like a pinkish-gray; slightly translucent slug; and it was totally limp like Frieda's cat. (Frieda is the Peanuts character with the "naturally curly hair" and the cat that just hangs over her shoulder.) Everything I tried to get it out would twist it or turn it until it's nasty little body was twisted halfway round. This job was so repulsive that I was shaking. At one point I'd put down the skewer to try something else, and when I picked it up again I grabbed the wrong end and got slimy mouse fur on my hand. Is there a word, or even a sound, for how disgusting that is?
Finally I got a second skewer--a metal one this time, with a loop on one end--and while I used the bamboo skewer to hold the body down, I used the metal loop to scrape the tail loose. At last the mouse was free. I could now scoop it up with one skewer while I used the other to steady it. I got it all the way out of the fridge, dropped it on a waiting pile of old plastic bags, and then wrapped all of it--the mouse and both skewers--in several plastic bags, which Bruce promptly took out to the trash. (Fortunately the garbage truck hadn't come around yet, and we wouldn't have to live with that thing rotting in our trash can for another week.)
When my foul chore was done, and the mouse was safely out of sight, I went and scrubbed--and scrubbed and scrubbed--my hands. Then I prepared a bleach solution for Bruce to use to clean up the condensation tray; I was not sad when I spilled bleach on my hands. While Bruce sprayed bleach into the tray and vacuumed it out with our small wet-dry vac (several times) I worked on other things in my room, wanting to cry the whole time.
Even though the stench was gone, I couldn't bear to eat anything in that kitchen; we had plenty of good food in the kitchen that Friday, but I was starving. All day long I had visions of slimy, limp, hairless, dead mouse dancing in my head. The whole morning was so upsetting that I couldn't even blog about it that evening.
By Saturday I thought I was over it, but cooking dinner almost made me gag that night. Today I'm doing OK. But thinking about it and writing about it is . . . sickening.
Oh! Will this trauma burn in my mind forever?
A 
