Wednesday, January 07, 2009

This Stinks

A new and exciting world has opened up before me since returning from Christmas vacation. We were not gone for long, a little over a week. Everything seemed fine. Everything looked fine. Everything did NOT smell fine.

Specifically our oven. Oh, it smells fine when it's just sitting there shiny and new. I give it loving looks every now and then just so it knows that I am well aware of the luxury of having a brand new gas oven. I think the love affair I've been having is not one sided either. Our oven has worked amazingly roasting chickens, broiling fish, and browning the bread to just the right color. That is until a few nights ago. As I was cooking our meatloaf dinner a strange smell emanated from the oven. The unmistakable smell of urine. Daniel pulled the oven out and found loads of mouse poop and urine all over the floor. (This would be what precipitated getting the cat.) He cleaned it up really well and we figured that was that.

Skip to today. I made muffins for lunch and that awful stench came back. I decided to look this phenomenon up on the Internet and this problem is fairly common. It seemed as though there was a whole world of people that were dealing with this problem. I read story after story about mice getting into the oven and nesting. Person after person taking apart the appliance to deep clean it and then the oven usually had to be totally replaced. Oh, you can take it apart and try to clean everything out (which I'm sure Dan will try), but if they've gotten into your insulation there's nothing to be done. That smell will never go away.

What I feel really upset about is that we were only gone one week! One stinking week and mice may have ruined a very expensive, very new large appliance! We already had our furnace go out, and now this!

I just hope that Daniel can clean out the oven because there's no way a woman that's 23 weeks pregnant should be doing that chore.

1 comment:

anorthowife said...

i was lucky - the mice got into the stove, but had not been nesting there. you're right, it IS a big hassle to clean it all up! so the stories aren't just online, they're right here at my house too... apparently they used to crawl up under my burners and then come up through the stove top to get to the counters! imagine how terrible it was to find out i had been cooking OVER that stuff! im sorry that you have to deal with this at all, let alone when you're preggo.

but at least you're still adorable and charlotte is taking after her mom!