Good People

It stunk, it really, really stunk. Our basement I mean. One step into the storage room kicked in the gag reflex and brought fear into my body--not a mouse, please not a dead mouse. I have a completely irrational fear of mice. We have the little plug in things that are supposed to repel them so I feel a little safer; but still I FREAK if someone leaves the door open, and panic if something looks even remotely like a...dropping. We have had two on the premises since moving here and that has been more than enough. From the smell of things, whatever got into our storage room was clearly dead. That was good news, but how did it get in and would there be more to follow? For the past week, I have been on a constant state of alert. And something had to be done about the smell.

Matt thinks I over exaggerate. He's probably right most of the time but the smell was bad. Even the kids could smell it. Luckily he had the 24th off and could devote an entire day to finding and removing the cause. Turns out Matt isn't much tougher than me when it comes to smells. But he is the man of the house and there was no way I was going to let him get out of his manly duties to remove dead things. That is totally the guy's job. The smell was coming out of the furnace area. He pulled it apart and the stink got worse. Whatever it was must have climbed inside. He cut pipe, rinsed things off in bleach, saw things I don't even want to know about (and refused to look at) until he thought he'd solved the problem.

Except that he didn't. The next day is smelled worse. We kept the door shut and on Saturday he was working at it again. He looked into another pipe and finally discovered the problem--something had died and it was covered in maggots. I got this news while I was eating a bowl of cereal. The cereal went down the drain. Matt will do most things, but this one was beyond him. He was already dry heaving at the smells and the maggots were pushing him over the top. He did the only thing he could think of. He called his dad. I thought he would just ask him to talk him through it, like he usually does. But he needed more. He needed Mike's expertise, companionship and strong stomach for the job. And, even though he lives in St. George, he agreed to come help.

When I heard of this crazy plan, I strongly suggested to Matt that he buck up, do it himself and tell his dad not to come. A four hour drive just to get rid of a smell? But it was too late, he was already on the road. Amazing. Mike and Dianne are two of the most giving people I know so I shouldn't have been surprised that they were insisting that he come help. But I still think it is amazing.

I strategically kept myself outside during the clean up process, providing the necessary cleaning supplies and that was about it. It took a few hours and some extreme measures to avoid the smell, but they found the unfortunate bird that must have been sucked into the furnace after it tried to make a nest in a pipe outside. And after a lot of bleach, pine sol and paper towels things are smelling much better. At least it wasn't a mouse.

Thanks Mike for saving the day. You are a great example and a real hero.