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Show by Jan Mice are stinkers. But dead mice are even worse, and that's what we were faced with last weekend at our cabin in Fishlake. Mom and I went up to whip the cabin into shape for the press convention The Reaper is hosting this weekend and when we walked in, it hit us in the face there was a dead mouse somewhere and the odor was prevalent. The question was: Where was the little creature? He'd nibbled some of the poison we'd left out, but instead of keeling over near the deadly dinner like most mice, this one crawled into some hidden crevice and died and the only sign we had was the smell. We looked in all the obvious places first; under the couches, the chairs, the television, all to no avail. By this time we were used to the awful odor so we had to go outside for a breather and come in with re-newed sniffers to sniff out the rotting rodent. We had to find the thing! We pulled all the cushions off the furniture. No mouse, but there were nuts and seeds and other little droppings so we knew one had been there. Our search next took us under the refrigerator, which isn't a pleasant sight in any household. Everything that had rolled, dropped or spilled under it was in one conglomerated glob. There was also one overly-dead mouse, but he was petrified past the stinking stage so he wasn't the cause of our problems. After cleaning up under the fridge we moved to the stove, where the same gob of gook met us. We tore the oven apart, loking in vents and under the units . . . still no crispy critter. Could he have crawled up in the ceiling beams? I climbed up the ladder and balanced on the 4x4's looking for the odiforous mouse. Immediately I was tangled in a mass of cobwebs. Mom figured while I was up there I might as well wipe them down, We have a cob-webless ceiling, but I found no mouse. We cleaned out the fireplace, looked in the wood pile, took the stereo and speakers off the walls ... no mouse. We searched behind light fixtures and took the heating panals apart. Mark even crawled under the cabin to ss if it was under there . . . still no mouse. We finally decided to give up and cover the odor with lysol and air fresheners, so instead of smelling like a dead mouse, the cabin would smell like a bathroom. You know, everyone should have a dead mouse hide in their house once or twice a year. It makes you clean all those places you put off cleaning; like vacuuming the furniture, mopping under the fridge, cleaning out the cobwebs, dusting the heating panels, straightening the woodpile, wiping out light fixtures, etc. As for our rotting rodent we found the problem. It seems the week before we pulled a cabinet out of one of the bedrooms upstairs and there was a nest of very dead mice nestled in one of the drawers. We cleaned it out and left the cabinet upstairs to air out. Everytime a door would open or the wind would shift the smell would drift downstairs. We scrubbed it out good with ammonia and now not only have we conquered our mousie problem, we have the cleanest cabin on the Fishlake National Forest! ' ' |