Of Mice and Women

OMG -- opened the door to the laundry room on Sunday morning and it literally smelled like something had died in there.

My laundry room is also my storage room and it is full of crap. To find something in there is sometimes like looking for a needle in a haystack. Not only do I have lots of boxes of crap on the shelves, I also have a washer, dryer, chest freezer and regular sized refrigerator crammed into a very small space. I am very tempted to purchase one of those ugly metal storage buildings and plopping it down in the northeast corner of my back yard.

Back to the smell....after my initial inhalation of the odor I decided that it was probably a dead mouse. I have had more mouse problems this winter than ever before. So I begin pulling out boxes, coolers, sacks of sacks, fans, blankets, more sacks, hummingbird feeders, softball bats, fishing poles, tv trays, etc. I finally came to the conclusion that the smell was coming from UNDER the freaking refrigerator. Mother. Trucker. I went outside to take in some fresh air and tried to come up with a plan. Moving the refrigerator by myself really wasn't an option. Kris isn't much help when it comes to dealing with anything smelly. I thought about opening up one of those air freshners in the shape of a Christmas tree or marijuana leaf and positioning it over her ears and under her nose but I don't think she would've seen the humor in it. So I punted on asking her to help me.

I ended up leaving the window open all day and night in the laundry/storage room. I piled all of the crap back on the shelves and shoved the little things into nooks and crannies. I did not manage to do this without using very colorful adjectives. So if there is a mouse under the damn refrigerator it can just decompose on its own time. The smell didn't seem as bad this morning but I didn't take any chances. I armed myself with some kind of apple-cinnamon spray from Pier One and spritzed the room with it before loading the washing machine. Nothing like the smell of a decomposing mouse carcass overlayed with apple-cinnamon air freshener.

I bought some more mouse traps and will strategically place them in the laundry/storage room this evening. Hopefully I won't have to hold my breath the next time I open that door. Wonder what the decomposition rate is for a dead mouse?