How It's Going - The One With The Dead Thing In The Wall

I blogged about this a couple of years ago but I can't find it now so I'll recap it here. Its relevance will become clear later.

Many years ago, I was sitting in our quiet kitchen and heard a tiny scratching in the vicinity of our kitchen closet. I couldn't see anything in the closet and the cats didn't catch anything over the next day or two, so I assumed the critter - if that's what it was - had made its way out the same way it had made its way in.

I was wrong.

Two weeks later, I started noticing a peculiar and not very pleasant odour in the closet whenever it was opened. That's when I realized the poor critter had died in the space between the walls. After crying for its sad end, I took everything out of the closet and waited for the smell to dissipate. Which it did, in the fullness of time.

Time during which I pictured the poor little corpse slowly drying up and leaving behind a poor little skeleton.

My husband examined the exterior of the house to try to find the entry point for the critter, but if you've ever see how small a mouse can be, and how much smaller it can make itself to get through or under something, you'll realize what an impossible job that was. But he found a few possible holes and filled them with expansion filler.

Alas, it all happened all over again a year or two later. Husband went around again with the expansion filler and sealed even the tiniest nail holes.

Alas . . . and you know what happened again.

Finally, the next time I heard scratching in that wall, I begged my husband to cut a piece out of the wallboard so we could rescue the critter before it died this time.

He agreed to do it, probably because he thought it would be easier than watching me cry, although he wasn't hopeful that the intruder would magically be in the precise spot he cut open.

And indeed, there was no body, dead or alive, in the space he excavated. He propped a panel of wood against the wall, held in place by a couple of pieces of heavy wood, and left the next step to me. I had no idea what the next step was, but it turned out none was needed.

That evening, after my husband was asleep in front of the TV, I was walking through the kitchen and a tiny movement caught my eye. I had been out for a walk in the rain earlier in the day, and I had hung my yellow raincoat on the doorknob of the door leading to the back deck. Sitting on top of the raincoat on the doorknob was a teeny mouse.

I grabbed the cat and put her in the closest bathroom, grabbed the garbage can at the same time, and tiptoed back into the kitchen.

The mouse was gone.

I did the only thing I could do at that point - took the raincoat and gently threw it out the door onto the deck. And shut the door, rather quickly I might add.

The next day, I checked the raincoat three times before I brought it back in.

There was no further sign of the mouse.

The wooden panel that my husband had propped tightly against the wall, held in place, you recall, by several heavy boards, was found to be slightly askew.

That wasn't just a mouse, it was a mighty mouse.

Anyway, I see this post is getting too long, so I'll be back tomorrow with ......... Part 2 .......