The rat

A few months ago we started to smell a very strange odor. It was centered near the garbage and we found out that while it was near the garbage, that was not the offending member. The smell came from a bunch of plastic bags that I was keeping for later use. We threw them away thinking that maybe the cat had gone back there and used them for a litter box. That took care of the problem and life was peaceful again for a few days.

About a week later we smelt the same smell again, but this time it was coming when I turned on the oven. It wasn't strong, but I decided that we needed to mop the floor under the stove too. We did a lot of things, but the smell started fading. The only time you could smell anything was when the oven was on. I just figured that it was my pregnant nose acting up again.

Finally, last week it got so bad that I asked Jason to take to back off and see if something had died in the outer wall of the oven. He started taking the oven apart and the smell just kept getting worse and worse. We thought it would be a quick fix so I had bread rising on the counter. When we realized that something was on the insulation and it wouldn't be a quick fix we started taking the oven all the way apart to remove all of the insulation. I didn't get my bread made and ended up having to throw the dough away as we didn't get the insulation replaced until the next day. We did find a store near us that sells the insulation though.

After the stove was completely disassembled I was poking at the holes in it with a screwdriver and something moved. I shut the cat in the kitchen for the night as Jason was gone and I didn't want to see what had been in the insulation until it was dead.

The mouse escaped under the fridge and so we bought traps and more insulation and fixed things up again.

A few days after that we started to smell that smell again and so we moved the fridge and cleaned up behind it. It was so gross!!! As we were cleaning we didn't find the mouse and the cat all of the sudden had a great interest in our stove again.

Yesterday as I tried to cook dinner in the oven we once again smelt that familiar smell, although this time it was much worse. We found out that since the new insulation that we bought is thinner, it doesn't hide the smell as much. It was so bad that we had to turn off the stove, put dinner in the fridge for the next day, and eat out at Burger King after the service.

This morning Jason started to disassemble the oven once again to replace the padding, but this time we were determined to catch the mouse before we put everything back together. We put the cat on the top of the insulation and he started sniffing away. Jason tried pushing on the insulation to get the mouse to run out and couldn't find it. I started to poke with him on the top of the insulation and my hand hit this big bulge. I jumped back and told him that this was no little mouse that I felt.

That started an almost three hour time frame of chasing the mouse from fridge to stove and back again. During one of the trips between to the fridge we were able to see that this mouse was no mouse, but a rat. The little mouse traps we bought went off, but couldn't harm this rat as he was too big. The cat, we learned didn't want to kill the rat, but just wanted to play with him. Mittens was a great help though in letting us know where the rat was. After about 2 hours of chasing him all over the kitchen, the rat ran to my classroom/pantry. We kept chasing him and putting traps where ever we could to try and catch him. We finally succeeded when he was on the second shelf of my pantry with his tail hanging through one of the holes in the shelf. He was hiding from us. Jason took the rat trap (we went out and bought a new one that was bigger) and snapped it on his tail so he couldn't take off. He did manage to get loose from that, but he left about 1/3 of his tail behind. After that we chased him and he ran right into a glue trap. He caught his face in it. I took a picture of him (thinking he was dead) and then he started working his face loose from the trap so Jason took the dull end of a very big kitchen knife and beat him to death.

This whole time the kids were getting in the way so we told them to go sit on the couch and we would let them know when the mouse was dead. They were so excited to see it.

Our kitchen is now all back in order. We did move some things around to allow for ease of removing critters in the future, if needed. We are so very thankful that this is the first time this has happened to us. Ernesto and Nelly (Honduran friends of ours) told us that this is a very common occurrence and it happens to them a lot. No wonder the oven insulation is not hard to find. This is the first time for us in 5 years and I am very thankful for that. We did make a few changes to our house though. The dog food and water now stays outside and the inside garbage was moved so that nothing can fall behind it again. We are hoping that this will be the last time we have this problem.