This past week as I was getting in the Jeep to take Emme to school, I noticed a really bad odor permeating through the air when I opened the door. I was in a hurry so I just had to suffer through it but I was determined to find the source once I got home. I searched high and low and in every crevice that I could reach my arm into. What I found was goldfish cracker crumbs under Emme's carseat, a half eaten piece of sausage in Preston's carseat, a bag of Sixlets candy and then what I was sure to be the source of the problem....a bottle with about 1/2 ounce of milk in it that had rolled up underneath my passenger seat. "Strange," I thought as I looked at the nipple and noticed that there were teeth marks and holes in it. Since when did Preston chew the nipples off of his bottles? I was grateful that I was no longer breastfeeding if this is the kind of damage he's able to cause. Quickly, I put the bottle in the trash and was finally rid of the stink that it had caused. Or so I thought.
A few hours later when I went to pick Emme up and once again opened the door to the car, the smell hit me and this time caused me to gag. Even poor little Preston who does not have many words yet in his vocabulary knew to say "Pew." Actually, he said "pew" the entire drive to school. And he and Emme were both saying "Pew" the entire ride home.
I texted Greg and informed him that he needed to do some investigation when he got home from work. In the meantime, I decided I was going to look under the hood to see if I had roadkill lodged in there somewhere. This caused immediate concern for my neighbor who happened to be watching from his garage. Of course he wanted to know what I was doing so I had to explain the whole stinky story He must have been a bit intrigued or maybe a bit sympathetic but he began helping me with the detective work. We found nothing.
Enter Greg into the picture. He's so smart. He comes home from work, opens the car door, gags a little, probably said "Pew" and 30 seconds later said to me, "there's a dead mouse in the dashboard." Excuse me?
I had two main concerns at this point. One being, how are we going to get it out because Lord knows I cannot continue to drive around holding my nose with one hand and steering with the other all while hearing "pew pew pew" from the backseat. And the second was the thoughts that I had been driving around with a MOUSE in my car. A mouse that was obviously alive at one point. Alive and most likely having the feast of his life on sixlets and sausage. Oh, and now this explains the teethmarks in the nipple since he was apparently trying to wash everything down with the milk left in Preston's bottle. Folks, let me reiterate to make sure you see this from the same perspective I do. This mouse could have crawled up my pant leg, ran across the kids laps or danced across my dash all while giving me a heart attack. But instead, he decided that after such a scrumptious dinner, he needed a nap....inside the dash board. I can only assume that he ended up dying in there because he ate so much that he was now too fat and gluttonous to get himself back out.
So, here we are five days later and the smell is STILL there. Greg and I are in a constant debate over who should have to ride around with Dead Mouse. He insists that he should not have to because he has to eat his breakfast in there on his way to work and how can he possibly enjoy his coffee and English muffin with carcass stinch in the air? I suggest to him that perhaps I should just not make him any breakfast.
We have consulted the internet about what to do to rid ourselves of this problem and the general consensus is that you just have to let it "age" and the smell will eventually dissipate on its own. Gross.
In the meantime, Emme had a genius idea that we should get an air freshener. Of course! A febreeze car freshener is what I need! You've seen the commercials where they blindfold people and sit them next to bags of trash and rotten food and the people are smiling with their blindfolds on and say something like "it smells just like the beach!" I'm here to tell you that those people are actors and liars. I attached it to my air vent just as the instructions said and turned the air on so as to get the fresh Gain scent wafting through the air. Not only did I not smell anything that even remotely reminded me of the beach but I also learned very quickly that I cannot under any circumstances turn my air on again until the mouse "ages."
How long does it take a dead mouse to "age?" I've never had to consider the answer to that question before now but I suppose I'm about to find out.
