The gear room
(where I have all my camping, cycling and climbing gear) has
some wiring issues. We've known from the beginning the light switch
at the door doesn't turn on the overhead light. Whether that's by
design (it turns on a receptacle instead) or a problem, I'm not
sure. One of the receptacles is wired backwards, then there's this
one - the Receptacle of Death. Not only does it spark and wiggle
(loose screws and wires), but it smells of death. The previous owner
used poisen to trap and kill mice (ever think of just closing all
the holes in the outside walls of the house?). This method basically
leaves dead mice rotting in your walls and overhead ceilings. I've
found twelve such mice so far (six in one spot). I'm sure the
smell emitting from this receptacle is just another graveyard of
poisened rotting mice carcasses.
The trick will be do I cut out the receptacle
box to get to the mice and will that even provide me access to their
direct location in the wall? It's a pain and one I'm not too
eager to tackle just yet. Luckily you only smell it when you bend
down close and inhale. How often do find yourself doing that
around your receptacles?
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Lately the smell
emmitting from the receptacle had gotten worse. I couldn't take it
anymore and pulled the
face plate off. This is what I saw.
It's like a horror movie. I couldn't believe
it.
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I pulled the receptacle
out and it got worse. There's actually two mice tangled up in the
wires. Not sure if
they were electrocuted, poisened or both, but
they'd been dead a while.
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I cut the box out, then
decided to cut a bigger hole in the wall. If it was anything like
what I found before, I
was going to need a bigger hole. I was
right.
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I pulled eighteen mice out of
the hole. Counting the two in the receptacle that made twenty. Then
the one
in the trap in the ceiling made twentyone for the day.
That puts the grand total of dead mice in our house
since we
moved in to thirtysix.
The smell is awful. It gets
everywhere. You think it's on your clothes and in your hair. You
spend the rest
of day wondering if you've been contaminated in
some way. It gives me a headache
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The wire running from
the receptacle to the switch above is pretty well chewed. You can
see where the
little buggers even chewed the wood around the
wire.
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What I
can't believe is this is the size of the hole the mice used to crawl
into the receptacle box - and
there was a wire through the one
they went through?!?!?
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Decided on a quick and easy
cover-up. The downstairs will get completely re-done at some point.
These
covers were adequate for now. The green one was a
second hole I cut in the wall on the other side of the
stud. The
wire to the receptacle went back this way. I was expecting a pile of
more dead mice, but didn't
find any. At least it gave me a chance
to shorten the nasty wire and put in another receptacle.
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Nothing like making
something ugly nice with a Twin Six
sticker.
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