Not Again

Towards the end of last week I started to hear rumors that the first big snowstorm was heading this way, scheduled to arrive either Wednesday or Thursday and if it was as bad as predicted it would drop well over a foot of the white stuff as it passed through. After last winter a foot of snow is hardly the kind of thing to get excited about anymore but it did serve as a reminder that I should probably get around to winterizing some items around the house. Normally I try to put this task off for as long as I can because Fall is my favorite season and in my mind winterizing the yard is like waving the white flag at Winter. Sadly, it turns out I still don't have a Weather Dominator, which means don't really get a vote. The cold is coming whether I want it to or not, so better to be ready than play catch-up. Plus I have to admit we've been pretty lucky this year with not having a major hurricane come through so I can't complain too much and this has to get done sooner or later, which is why Saturday seemed as good a day as any. With that in mind I headed out to the shed to collect the few items I need to make sure the snow doesn't mess with the things I can't get bring inside, specifically the A/C unit, deck chairs and grill. The good news is that I already have covers for all these things and I remember exactly where they are. The entire thing should only have taken me about 15 minutes and given me peace of mind for the rest of the day. Just so we're clear - getting the covers out and secured in place was all I wanted to do. The damn universe had other plans for me.

You may remember about a week ago when I went out to the shed and discovered a tail sticking out of the electrical box which held a light switch and your standard outlet. Part of the face plate covering that box had cracked and fallen away, which allowed a mouse to climb in and electrocute itself. At time time I was very confused at to what a mouse could possible find interesting about that particular area of the shed, especially to the extreme it was willing to die to get in there. Eventually I just pulled the mouse out and threw it into the woods then ended the post by proclaiming that I was going to get a new face plate so this never happened again. The thing is that never happened because it really wasn't in my plans. Not to get too inside baseball on you, dear readers, but not everything you read here is 100% factual. Sorry, but I have to confess that sometimes I end my posts with a joke or make an absurd declaration for the sake of wordplay and that was one of those times. Sure, if I was in a hardware store and remembered to wander over to that section I may eventually find a replacement face but I didn't need to go to one this week and I wasn't about to make a special trip for it. That would be silly because there was no great rush as this situation was so absurd it would obviously never happen again. No need to inconvenience myself over the actions of a solitary and stupid rodent. Those words were echoing through my brain as I found myself once again staring at the same cracked face plate with half of a different dead mouse hanging out of it.

If finding one dead mouse in your electrical box is an accident I can't imagine what two should be considered. The only good part about this particular dead mouse is that it was much fatter than the last one, so while the first one had crawled all the way in and eventually gotten itself wedged under the light switch, this one only made it about halfway before it met its demise, which also made it easier to remove (and allowed me to know right away it was not a snake). Also, I often say it only takes me one attempt at something before I consider myself an expert, so removing it was old hat. I just grabbed the same massive pair of pliers which I used last time, grabbed it by the tail and yanked away. It came out without much fanfare (though it also had a couple of random spiders attached to it) and I tossed it into the same area of the woods. At least this way if he came looking for his buddy they ultimately wound up in the same resting place. (Though it does make me wonder just how many more are in that search party.) Honestly, the entire thing left me more annoyed than anything. With that done I turned my attention back to the box to see what they could possibly find so damn fascinating about it. My first thought is that they are attracted by the warmth it gives off but in holding my hand up against it I didn't feel any heat, so there has to be something else which is causing the mice to be drawn to this thing like bugs to the blue zapper. Of course, since I was not interested in patenting this new, deadlier form of mouse trap I have stumbled upon my bigger desire was to fix this problem once and for all.

I removed what was left of the old plate, prepared to find anything behind it - a mouse den complete with babies, hoards of seeds, gold bullion - but was only met with the standard tangle of wires. What was interesting, though, was discovering that the faces on the outlet were in just as bad of shape as the face plate which was covering them. When I finally removed the last screws most of the operation fell apart in my hands. I don't know if this was the work of mice or it had been damaged by something else, but the half of the face plate I had left on last week was pretty much the only thing keeping the outlet side of this box together. The good news is that I have access to a workshop which has all sorts of goodies laying around, including extra electrical outlets. Also, there was a face plate with the configuration I needed attached to an electrical box downstairs. I didn't swap it out last week because I figured there was no need. Besides, I have to look at the outlet in the basement more frequently than the one in the shed and looking at an open outlet would annoy me. But, given what I have found the last two times I have look at the outlet in the shed I figured this was no time to worry about aesthetics. (As evidenced by the fact the outlet is now white, the switch brown and the face plate is black.) Now that the outlet is new and there is no space on face plate big enough for anything to force its way in, the next step will be wiping the box down with peppermint, as apparently mice hate peppermint the way tigers hate cinnamon. It was only after all this was done that I finally got around to putting the covers on the A/C unit, grill and deck chairs, also known as the reason I was in the shed in the first place. All I know is that after doing those unplanned extra tasks, watching the news last night and not seeing a single meteorologist even mention the possibly of snow mid-week may have been the most predictable part of the entire project.