What. Is. That. SMELL?!

It all started the day my brother and his family were here. I walked into the living room and said, "What is that smell?" They all looked at me as if they had know idea what I was talking about. OK. My brother has 3 boys. Three teenage boys. Maybe that's just their boy smell.

But I wasn't convinced... At All.

These boys are good looking kids and they practices good hygiene. I was pretty sure it wasn't them.

Our living room is the log cabin, a one room home that was once owned by one of our wrangler's grandparents. Whether they lived in it year round or just used it for a hunting or vacation cabin I don't know. Perhaps I should ask! The rest of the house is an addition. And really quite nice for an older home. The only complaint we have is the lack of bathrooms. No wait, we DO have bathrooms, what I mean is we don't have enough. Really we just wish there was a master bathroom.

The next day the smell was stronger. Can you really not smell that? They didn't seem to notice. By this time I knew what it was. It was a mouse. A dead mouse. I know that smell, I have a cat! I started checking the traps. The one behind the wood burning stove was still set. The one under a cabinet was tripped, but had caught the extension cord. I'm guessing that was from yanking the standing fan in front of the screen door too many times.

I had put out more traps just a few nights ago because I had seen a mouse run past the stove at 3 AM when I was up with the baby. He had come out from under the T.V. and had paused when he saw me in the big chair. I had paused too. I don't think it was for the same reason. But maybe it was. Maybe when a mouse sees a human, he gets a shiver down his spine. The hairs on the back of it's little neck stand up. But then again, maybe not.

That night I put out a lot more traps. But the next day I took them all down again because we were having a birthday party and I didn't want to trap party guests. Or gross out any moms. I checked all the corners where I thought there might be a forgotten trap but found nothing. The smell was getting worst. I could hardly stand to be in the room. Adventure Man couldn't smell it! My sister-in-law couldn't smell it. She asked what it smelled like and I told her, "a dead mouse!" No one knew what I was talking about. I tried, for the sake of our guests to not complain. To not say something. What if  I was wrong! What if teenage boys really DID smell like that! Heaven help us all when our girls start dating… when they are 29…

It wasn't until the day after my brother, his wonderful wife and all those great boys left that we found it. Bean bent down to the speaker next to the T.V. Then she come and whispered in my ear that she found the mouse. There was one more trap, in one more corner that I had missed. And it had been there for at least 4 days in a room  without AC in the hot summer heat.

I threw it all away, trap and all. I scrubbed the area, and let is soak to loosen that which was stuck to the floor. That was when Adventure Man walked in and said, "I smell it now!"

Darn Right You Smell It! And I Cleaned It UP!

I am happy to say, that my living room smells much MUCH better. And it wasn't my teenage nephews at all!