Mouse: 1; Me: Minus a Toaster
Apr. 13th, 2024 01:25 pm Yesterday I got home from Ye Old Factory after an overnight shift, at 11:30am. I proceeded to take a nap on the couch.
Around 14:00 I was rudely awakened by a mouse loudly squeaking. I didn't want to get up and knew from past experience there'd be no hope of confronting the culprit, I'd just see it scuttling behind the oven. So instead I just loudly exclaimed "SHUT UP MOUSE!!"
That worked for only about a minute before it started up again, so I got up, it was probably about time to anyway. Investigation revealed the mouse was actually in the toaster, his leg suck on the toast elevator. This was an interesting circumstance but there was no simple solution. The most obvious, that were this a computer game I'd call "delightfully evil" and do in a moment to an enemy, would be to activate the toaster and toast the hapless creature to death. But this is not a video game and I am not a sadist towards animals, that seemed cruel and inhumane. Plus, then I'd have a toasted mouse in my toaster!!!
But how to extract it? My favorite method of disposing of mice is somewhat avoidant -- I have live capture traps and when I get one I like to put it in my greenwaste bin. I assume it can happily live there off the bugs frolicking on rotting lemons in a sea of coffee grinds, until its pitched into the greenwaste truck where it will either be taken off to some greenwaste paradise, or possibly crushed, but ::shrug:: that's not on me and everything dies eventually. So I was contemplating maybe taking the toaster to the greenwaste bin and shaking it upside down into it in hopes the mouse popped out, when the mouse popped out. And in half a second had disappeared down the gap behind my kitchen cupboards (this place unfortunately is a mouse's dream with the available gaps).
So now this mouse is still alive in my house and I have a toaster it may have pooped and peed in. How do you clean a toaster? Maybe I should take a bath and bring the toaster that's a classic yeah? ahaha. If I had, like Paul "Maud dib" * Atriedes from Dune, had spice induced foreknowledge of future events, I suppose I would have just tossed the whole god damn toaster in the trash bin. It's a $40 toaster but not sure how I can possibly clean the insides it might as well be trash. (* "Maud dib" apparently means "desert mouse" in-universe, maybe it was the mouse that had foreknowledge of future events after getting into my spice cabinet)