The case of the mysterious smell
On Saturday night when I came home from the book release party I noticed a funny smell in the kitchen. I couldn’t identify it or locate it and I was too tired to spend much effort trying, so I ignored it.
Sunday morning the smell was much worse. It was the smell of a dead animal and it was coming from behind my fridge. I shared the observation with Howard and he agreed with my assessment. Together we pulled the fridge forward to see if we could find a dead mouse back there. We were able to ascertain that the smell was coming from the fridge rather than the wall, but failed to find a corpse. I’d hypothesized that perhaps a mouse had drown in the fridge’s drip tray, but it was dry and empty. We had to get ready for church, so we sprinkled baking soda liberally in the drip tray and on the floor. Then we pushed the fridge back into place. We hoped that the baking soda would absorb the smell. We also lit a scented candle. Later that evening Howard used turpentine in a painting project. The turpentine masked the rotten meat smell completely.
Monday our house smelled strongly of turpentine all day.
Tuesday the turpentine smell had dissipated, but the dead animal smell continued to waft from behind and beneath our fridge. By evening I was sick of it and vowed that first thing the next morning I would push the fridge back out and go hunting again. The strength and persistence of the smell led me to believe that this couldn’t possibly be a mouse. I was envisioning a rat somehow climbing inside my fridge and dying. But we’ve never had wild rats here. Perhaps someone’s pet had gotten loose? I thought about all those news stories where corpses are found because the neighbors noticed a nasty smell. If I lived in the twilight zone I’d probably find a human hand mysteriously rotting behind my fridge. I even spent some time trying to picture how one of the kids might have removed a chicken breast from the freezer and dropped it behind the fridge. Stranger things have happened.
This morning I collected flashlight and screwdriver. Then I pulled the fridge forward, removed the metal plate from the back, and went hunting. I found it. It was a dead mouse. Apparently this mouse had decided that the fan chamber was a good place to hide, then the fan turned on. The fan blades killed it. So the corpse of the mouse sat there in the fan chamber while the fan made sure that the rotting smell had the widest possible dispersion. We unplugged the fridge and commenced cleaning out the corpse and attendant mess. We used lots of bleach because anyone who has watched CSI knows that bleach is the proper way to clean up after a corpse.
We now have an extremely clean fridge fan and drip tray. The whole kitchen smells like a swimming pool, but I’ll take that over a kitchen smelling like dead animal any day. I’m glad we were able to find the mouse and get rid of it. Thanksgiving dinner accompanied by that particular smell would not be very appetizing.