It all began about a week ago, and in the intervening seven days, there had been several power outages in our kitchen. An RCD kept tripping randomly, making it difficult to diagnose which circuit was the problem: smoke alarms; kitchen lights; kitchen sockets; immersion heater; or oven. The most likely devices which would trigger these intermittent outages were a kettle, a toaster, the fridge-freezer or the immersion heater.
It dawned on me that this was going to need the services of a qualified professional, but with the random nature of the problem, I could see a huge electrician's bill in the offing, as various things were tried to narrow down the cause. Whilst mulling over the decision for one last time, prior to eventually caving in and making the call, my partner reckoned that we might have an uninvited guest because there was an aroma in the kitchen. My sense of smell is not great (a long-standing situation and not pandemic-related!) so I couldn't offer an opinion.
Then, in the middle of unpacking some food shopping, and whilst reorganising the freezer compartment, we discovered a pack of Chicken Kievs which had been gnawed open and the contents liberally sampled. What the actual?!
OK, that put a different complexion on things. Surely, there couldn't be a mouse in the freezer?! A moment's reflection brought the realisation that the Kievs had been transferred from the fridge to the freezer about a week ago, as their use by date was approaching. Had they been nibbled in the fridge, or had we bought them pre-chomped and not noticed the damaged packaging?
"... about a week ago..."
Now, there are two cats in this house, who aren't beyond bringing their work home from time to time, but there had been no tell-tale (tell-tail?) signs that this was the case. Usually in this sort of circumstance, both cats will sit and stare at a particular piece of furniture where a mis-placed rodent is hiding. There'd been none of that. However, mid-week, one of their dry food bowls had been completely emptied, whilst its neighbour remained quite full. In hindsight, it was the bowl nearest to the fridge-freezer.
Had we really been sharing the kitchen with a mouse for a week? Surely we would've noticed? There'd been no droppings visible, the permanently-set trap at one side of the fridge was untriggered and neither cat was exhibiting any strange behaviour (well, no stranger than expected). There followed a meticulous search of worktops and the kitchen floor, which did reveal one single, small, black object that could have possibly been a rodent dropping.
Hmmm.
There was nothing for it, I was going to have to move the fridge-freezer and see what was going on back there. Now, shifting large white goods in a tight space is always a challenge, only achieved by inching the device in question laboriously from side to side as it is manoeuvred in the required direction. Halfway through, I stopped for a breather and noticed a small brown furry creature darting to and fro from under the fridge-freezer. I can't now recall whether its breath smelled of garlic. Closing the kitchen door to reduce the chances of the problem widening, I continued with the extraction, only for the mouse to be mysteriously absent once I could see into the space. It turned out that I had inadvertently squished it during the latter part of the removal.
It quickly became obvious that the cats' dry food was being stored under the fridge-freezer, behind the freezer, in the drip tray and around the compressor. Frantic vacuuming also revealed a second dead mouse, although cause of death could not be ascertained. Once the area was hoovered and washed, I could see that ingress to the fridge had been made possible by widening the hole above the drip tray where water can trickle out of the fridge during normal operation. I am not sure how I can make this hole mouse-proof again without compromising the necessary draining activity, so I suspect that a new fridge-freezer purchase is on the horizon.
And, yes, the mains lead had been chewed in several places, which was presumably the source of the RCD tripping, though how the little loves hadn't fried themselves to mousy ever after, I shall never know. The cable was replaced pronto and we wait to see if there are any reoccurrences of the electrical fault.
I am still puzzled by the almost lack of mouse droppings, and also why the cats think I am going to forget this episode in a hurry.
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