appetite killer
Sep. 25th, 2006 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanThere are two pieces of background information you need in order to understand what happened last night.
One is that since I'm not home much during the week, I tend do all my cooking on Sunday. I pull everything out of the fridge, fill the compost bucket with everything that's green when it's supposed to be yellow, brown when it's supposed to be green, and fuzzy when it's supposed to be smooth. Everything that remains gets chopped, baked, stewed, sauced, dosed liberally with garlic, dolloped into microwavable containers and stuffed into the freezers for lunches yet to come. It's a serious assembly line. It's not unusual for people who are visiting my house on a Sunday afternoon to be fed one meal while three others bubble away on the stove.
Since I mainly do this on Sundays, the stove can easily sit completely untouched for the other six days of the week.
The second factor is that we have rodents in our house. Along with the occasional rat there is a pretty steady stream of mice scurrying around at night and leaving little black pellets under the sink. So we have traps set in strategic locations around the house, ususally where I have actually seen the little buggers. So there is one in the tool cupboard, one near the fridge, one behind the bread box - and one resting on a little shelf that runs behind the stove, just below the level of the burners.
Usually I check the traps every couple of days or so, but last week was a marathon of going to bed late and getting up early and my normal routines were getting more than a little frayed around the edges.
You can see where this is going, right?
I made gumbo and rice last night on the stovetop and stuck an apple pie in the oven to cook while I chopped up vegetables for an enormous salad and mashed up a bowl of really garlicky guacamole. I was hurrying because we had concert tickets and I wanted to get everything properly sealed up and ready to put away before we left the house. I was almost finished and just ladelling the cooling gumbo into the containers when I started thinking it really didn't smell right.
Had I messed up and used vegetables that weren't good? Maybe the sausage had been off? I'd kept it in the freezer. Man, there really is a kind of a low-level rotton smell that's really nasty. Maybe I should throw it out, just in case. Gods, it smells just like when my snake doesn't eat one of her rats and it lies under the heat lamp overnight...
Oh! Oh man!
The mouse looked like it had been in the trap for a couple of days before the heat from the stove alerted me to it's presence. It was the second... or maybe the third grossest thing I've ever had to clean up.
Axel made sympathetic noises from the other room, but very pointedly did not get up from his computer. He tells me he was busy putting his boots on.
One is that since I'm not home much during the week, I tend do all my cooking on Sunday. I pull everything out of the fridge, fill the compost bucket with everything that's green when it's supposed to be yellow, brown when it's supposed to be green, and fuzzy when it's supposed to be smooth. Everything that remains gets chopped, baked, stewed, sauced, dosed liberally with garlic, dolloped into microwavable containers and stuffed into the freezers for lunches yet to come. It's a serious assembly line. It's not unusual for people who are visiting my house on a Sunday afternoon to be fed one meal while three others bubble away on the stove.
Since I mainly do this on Sundays, the stove can easily sit completely untouched for the other six days of the week.
The second factor is that we have rodents in our house. Along with the occasional rat there is a pretty steady stream of mice scurrying around at night and leaving little black pellets under the sink. So we have traps set in strategic locations around the house, ususally where I have actually seen the little buggers. So there is one in the tool cupboard, one near the fridge, one behind the bread box - and one resting on a little shelf that runs behind the stove, just below the level of the burners.
Usually I check the traps every couple of days or so, but last week was a marathon of going to bed late and getting up early and my normal routines were getting more than a little frayed around the edges.
You can see where this is going, right?
I made gumbo and rice last night on the stovetop and stuck an apple pie in the oven to cook while I chopped up vegetables for an enormous salad and mashed up a bowl of really garlicky guacamole. I was hurrying because we had concert tickets and I wanted to get everything properly sealed up and ready to put away before we left the house. I was almost finished and just ladelling the cooling gumbo into the containers when I started thinking it really didn't smell right.
Had I messed up and used vegetables that weren't good? Maybe the sausage had been off? I'd kept it in the freezer. Man, there really is a kind of a low-level rotton smell that's really nasty. Maybe I should throw it out, just in case. Gods, it smells just like when my snake doesn't eat one of her rats and it lies under the heat lamp overnight...
Oh! Oh man!
The mouse looked like it had been in the trap for a couple of days before the heat from the stove alerted me to it's presence. It was the second... or maybe the third grossest thing I've ever had to clean up.
Axel made sympathetic noises from the other room, but very pointedly did not get up from his computer. He tells me he was busy putting his boots on.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 01:29 pm (UTC)Ohhh dear!
haha! your icon
Date: 2006-09-25 01:31 pm (UTC)It was pretty oogy.
Re: haha! your icon
Date: 2006-09-25 01:45 pm (UTC)Ohhhh dear!! I've had that aswell. I've even had a time when the mouse got free of the trap but it had done some damage and the mouse ended up hiding somewhere and the god awful stench was unbearable. We found him though.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 01:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 01:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 02:48 pm (UTC)Sorry Miss S & Mr A, but between near-live pigs on a spit and dead mice in the oven ... and the whole I can't get to Canadia with out stepping foot in Bush Land thing... I'll pass.
/Yes, I have mouse issues, thanks kitties.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 03:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 03:07 pm (UTC)Know what I mean?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 03:10 pm (UTC)(Well, except once to
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 11:24 pm (UTC)I may be a wuss but I refuse to eat anything that looks like it used to be alive - whole fish, prawns ... pig on a spit.
That way I can enjoy the flesh of dead animals without guilt. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-26 02:14 am (UTC)If I couldn't face where my food comes from - and what gets done to it in order to turn it into "food" - then by my own moral code I would have to stop eating it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-26 02:19 am (UTC)Unfortunately in this one area of my life I chose to be completely oblivious to the elephant in the room (and immoral): that I am eating the flesh of something that once went 'moo', or 'baah' as the case may be.
I am, as I said, a wuss.
I do try to buy free-range chicken. Mostly.
/When the zombie apocalypse comes I'm gonna be screwed.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-26 03:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 02:00 pm (UTC)It took advantage of my distracting presence to dash away. Slinky spent the rest of the morning hunting for it and giving me dirty looks.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 02:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 03:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 03:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 02:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 06:44 pm (UTC)Misery Taker-Outer
Date: 2006-09-25 06:54 pm (UTC)Once, I came across a half-dead snake while out riding my bike. I couldn't let it suffer, but it was clearly not going to live. I tried to finish what had been started, and I began backing over it again and again with my bicycle. Took me forever.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 03:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 03:21 pm (UTC)Funnily enough, i had a dream about you yesterday, and you were cooking. I was putting my bag on and getting ready to leave, and asked you to pass a message to someone (erm, probably Axel or E.) You whipped around with a big smile and thrust a dime at me as token of a promise to do it.
Later, i was scrabbling in my bag for it, frantic that i'd lost the damn thing, knowing it was luck. (it was there.)
Dunno, i just work here.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 04:09 pm (UTC)As for mice...I had several in my last place, and they seemd to really love my studio/workshop. Nothing like having to toss/wash/sanitize fabric that has mouse pellets on it... Someone gave me a couple of those ultrasonic rodent repellers and they worked! After I plugged them in, I never saw another mouse. Ever!
Hmmm...maybe we should have a gross story-fest here on LJ....I've a couple more.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 03:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 03:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-30 02:33 am (UTC)Enjoy. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 04:29 pm (UTC)I once moved into an apartment that had been unoccupied all summer. The fridge was unplugged. I have no idea what was in the bottom of the fridge-my mother volunteered to clean it out. I almost was tempted to ask the landlord for a new fridge. It reeked and looked like it was trying out for a horror film!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-26 02:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-26 02:26 am (UTC)I moved into a house with a similar sort of fridge: unplugged and left to wither away for god-knows how long.
We didn't use it, but one night I got it into my head to clean it.
That was one job I wish I'd never undertaken.
Never did get the smell out.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 04:29 pm (UTC)Our cats have a habit of bringing mice into the house via the cat flap, then turning them loose, sometimes alive and fine (sort of stocking the area) sometimes beyond repair, so they die someplace inaccessable. *sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 04:57 pm (UTC)We've been having fruit fly issues in the past week but, really, that doesn't even begin to compare.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 05:03 pm (UTC)Phew. I was heading towards four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. Bweeeeh!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 06:32 pm (UTC)Though, we once had a hamster named Herman, who had a penchant for escaping. One time he decided to camp in the drawer under the stove. Spent all night moving his food [knocked over the box of pellets, gnawed through the box and moved about half before morning] and i was very worried because usually we could find him.
A few nights go by, and The Husband decided to use the oven to bake something. In those days, we used to eat out a lot. i walked into the kitchen and some movement out of the bottom of the oven caught my eye. Poor Herman. It was getting hot and he was trying to decide if he should make a break for it or not.
We landed up moving the stove out from the wall and making enough noise that he finally broke for it and i could catch him. i think he was relieved to be put back in his cage...until we bought what we thought was an escape-proof cage...which he later escaped from...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 08:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-25 10:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-26 02:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-26 03:16 am (UTC)And I for one believe him.
Wholeheartedly.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-28 12:11 am (UTC)I'm sorry I didn't mention it in time for you to use for this post.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-30 02:34 am (UTC)I'm not sure how many people would actually recognize her though. (Mind you, people seem to do ok with Jaques Cousteau, and I wasn't sure about him either.)