Unusual.
I have an unusual problem ... related to Chr1stmas ... and I think that the chances of anyone being able to advise on it are pretty small. It also has a disgusting quality which makes me realise how totally ... and probably beyond ... un-anal I must be. I seem able to get used to ANYTHING.

It is that a rat must have been living IN my electic cooker. I was surprised myself, obviously, I am not THAT relaxed and slutty. My house looks fairly normal in a bohemian sort of way and has flowers around and washing-up done etc.

When I was making the pumpk1n pie for Hall0ween I used this cooker for the first time for weeks. It is next to the agA* as a back-up and normally only useful for pastry things. After a short while the kitchen filled with a smell so terrible that the others actually started gagging and had to go outside. It had a peculiar undertone which we somehow 'just knew' was baking urine. 'A rat must have been going around behind it .. waiting to come out and eat the cat food', said my daughter. True .. when pulled out there were 'droppings' and a horrific slidy brown mark where it .. or (eeuww) 'they' ... had been squeezing past. So I hoovered and washed the floor and everywhere with undiluted disinfectant ... and turned the oven back on. And the smell was exactly the same. The others went out into town and I cooked the pie anyway as I had no choice .. with all windows and doors open. You could see that the rat had no way of getting into the INSIDE of the oven .. I'm not totally unhygenic and mad.

So I then forgot all about it until now. As I have to use the electric one since the oil has run out (temporarily). Yesterday I placed a fish pie into the oven and OMG there was the smell .. fresher and possibly stronger than ever. Oh why and how? Under (?) the cooker were more droppings and as I was hoovering them up I noticed that they were mixed with fluffy stuff. That looked like ... wadding. And on inspection there was a gap on the back of the cooker that someone determined and squidgy could probably get through. A buried memory surfaced. Last time my daughter was here we were standing around chatting on her first morning when a rat zoomed out from behind the cooker and left the room by the hall door. 'Isn't that weird?', she said. 'A few weeks ago I would have jumped onto a chair, screaming, and now I couldn't give a f.ck'. 'Yes, I must have disturbed it eating the cat food when I came down and it hid under there'. We thought no more about it.

A quick explanation ... in September , round here, rats come in from the fields and try to find places to live for the winter. There are always a few weeks when they look for every possible entry point into the house and in ours there are endless little gaps round outside pipes and cracked floorboards etc. and we have to track them down and fill them with wire and concrete.

BUT .. now I see that it wasn't hanging about on whim, it was LIVING between the two walls of the cooker. And although that was obviously it leaving ... the wadding must still be completely 'soaked' and worse and I'm not sure if the smell will ever go. I left it on for hours yesterday and again today to see if it would dry out and bake the smell away ... but no ..not at all.

What I mean about the 'un-anal' is that left to and by myself, I would probably do nothing. Just always have the windowns open when I baked a pie. But Chr1stmas is the one time when this cooker is vital .. we use it constantly .. and it is in the middle of the kitchen in the middle of the house. And everyone sits there all day and it is the setting for Chr1stmas lunch and every other meal including those where we might have guests. And my husband has the exquisitely tuned sense of smell of a w1ne connoisseur. Even without that, however, the smell is UNBEARABLE. If you would like to experience my life for a moment .. leave a small saucepan of urine boiling on YOUR stove while you are having dinner. And then perhaps you could give me your thoughts on what could possibly be done.
- posted by Iris @ 12/11/2005 12:33:00 AM comment