The Kitchen of Death.

Catchy title, huh?  I bet it made you want to jump right in and read this blog post.

I figured out what happened to the MIA mouse/mice. 

My first clue came from the horrific stench coming from the cabinet under the sink. And by horrific, I mean, one of the worst smells you could possibly imagine. It started small, and grew, and grew...and grew some more.

I first noticed the smell on Thursday. So let's see, that's about four days after the last known mouse sighting and/or scat evidence. (That's wilderness talk, not to mention a more ladylike way, to say "mouse poop.") My mystery writing research has yet to lead me down the path to searching for "decomposition rates and factors" but if Law & Order/CSI episodes count for anything (which I'm not sure they do) four days would be about right for a stench like that? I really don't have any idea, I just knew that it smelled and it had been awhile since we'd seen anything scurrying about.

By Friday, I was compelled to pull everything out from the cupboard under the sink, just to make it stop. With trembling, plastic-covered hands, I pulled every bottle out of the glass recycling. I replaced the PMC recycling bag. I took the paper and cardboard out of the recycling box, piece by piece. My theory (at that point) was that it crawled into one of the aforementioned containers and got stuck. My oldest watched in amazement and told me I had a lot of courage. So I guess there's that. But to both my horror, and relief, there was no dead, stuck mouse. 

Huh.

The mouse poop told me that he/she'd been there, but was long gone. Ahem. No pun intended. I cleaned everything with bleach laden products and put it all back, stumped. How does a mouse just die? 

And then, my mystery-writer-lawyer-fact-finding-brain figured it out. You see, a few years ago, we got a new dishwasher. And when they installed said dishwasher, the holes for the screws didn't line up with the holes in the wall in exactly the same way. Unconcerned, the installers said, "Meh, don't worry about it, it will be fine." (But in French.) When we had to have the dishwasher serviced a few months later (because a bolt of lightning shorted out the electric), that serviceman said the same thing. When my cousin, who grew up on a farm and is a descendant of my grandfather, (which means he can fix ANYTHING), looked at it and said, "there's no way to fix it." We gave up. The result, is that when the dishwasher is really full, when the racks are open, the entire dishwasher tips forward, just a little, sending the plates crashing into each other. 

So back to my theory: One day, when the dishwasher was really full, it tipped forward with the loud crashing noise it makes when it does this. And however many little mousy critter(s) were hiding underneath, finding themselves in the relatively open space, scooted themselves back up against/under the dishwasher. And when the dishwasher got shut and therefore straightened back into its rightful position...well. You can probably guess. Said little critter(s) got squashed. Which brings my personal philosophy that "everything happens for a reason" to a whole new level.

But leads me to my next question. How long does this horrid stench last? A google search revealed loads of interesting information. One post said that a dead mouse smells like "death." Um. Yeah. Thanks, that helps a lot. But I guess now I know what death smells like. The consensus seemed to be that one tiny mouse, supposedly, equals two days of smell (longer for more, or other, larger dead things.) Um....let me just point out with a big shiver that we're going on Day SEVEN here. Another post said the only way to get rid of the smell of a dead mouse in the wall was to cut a hole in the wall and find it. Hmm. Go ahead and ask me how excited I am to yank the dishwasher out of the way to retrieve the seven-day-old decomposing carcass of one (or probably more) dead mice (or possibly other large rodent-type-animal that starts with the letter "R" and I won't let my kids say out loud in my presence). Go ahead. Ask me.

To which another poster replied that if a mouse dies in the wall, you could feasibly end up with ten or more holes in the wall because there is no way to know for sure if you have the right spot, and it's better just to wait. A big shout out to that voice of reason! Ok, let's just assume, for all intents and purposes, that there is no possible way to reach the dead rodent. 

Some tips for dealing with (getting rid) of the smell: heat and candles help to dry out the rotting dead thing and burn the odor out of the air. My radiator in the kitchen is set to as high as it will go. I pulled out every candle I owned and have kept a candle vigil going in the kitchen for the last 24 hours (but obviously except for when I leave the house or go to bed) because that would just not be good for fire safety. And it would be just my luck to get the car back, only to start my kitchen on fire.

As I write this, my kitchen is about 100 degrees and smells like a melding combination of cornflower-blueberry-cinnamon-apple pie-vanilla-pine tree...and let's not forget...death.

Sigh. 

At least I have my car back and I can leave to go get takeaway for dinner?
  

Tomorrow is another day. And I hope that one of these days, I can stop saying that.