Life's other certainty

Geez, I make a reference yesterday to discussing death and then today Terri Schiavo dies and the pope comes awfully close.
I considered discussing what has become the Schiavo debacle, but with so many other pundits and people who have never seen/met her weighing in on the situation and giving medical diagnoses, I'll think I'll stay out of the fray. Besides, what expertise could I possibly have to offer that "psychic" John Edward hasn't already?

So on to my story:

A few days ago, I finally put two and two together and realized that the odor problem in my hallway closet was connected to an earlier problem I had involving a roommate.
Unfortunately, my roommate was of the small, furry, rodent type. (See?!? Now my apartment seems like a crap-hole again and nobody's ever going to want to come and visit me...)

About a week and a half after I moved in, I noticed that a hole had been chewed through the plastic bag of the bread I had left on the kitchen counter and part of the bread had been eaten. I was pretty sure I hadn't done that in my sleep, so I told the landlords that I had a rodent problem.
The next day, they sent a maintenance guy with a few sticky traps that he put down in strategic positions. He also stuffed a couple of holes with steel wool, which he said the rodents won't chew through.

I checked the traps daily but nothing happened for a couple of days. Then late one night, I heard the scurrying of tiny feet in the vents.
Not a good sign.

The next morning, I woke up and realized that my little friend was not impressed with my efforts to catch it. One of the sticky traps that lay between the stove and refrigerator had been scooted to the side to allow passage. Another trap behind the stove had an upside-down cockroach trap on top of it. I don't even know where the cockroach trap came from! So not only did this rodent know that the sticky traps should be avoided, it dragged some cockroach trap it found who-knows-where and dropped it on the sticky part so that it didn't have to worry about it.

It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was dealing with an escaped lab rat that had been genetically altered to become supersmart.
Or worse, I thought, what if it's a squirrel? I actually worried about this latter possibility because:
a) I really rather like squirrels.
b) If you've ever tried to prevent them from doing something, you know squirrels are unbelievably clever.
I finally decided it probably wasn't a squirrel because, if it had been, I would have already returned from work late one night to find my cupboards cleaned out; my Xbox, TV and other valuables gone; and a spray-painted note scrawled on the wall saying: "DEEZ NUTS!!!!"

Ahem.
Anyhow, I rearranged some of the steel wool to better block one of the holes and waited. I haven't heard or seen Brain (nor his cohort Pinky) since, and I've even begun keeping bread out on the counter again without any problem. So I had sort of forgotten about it. But when the closet started stinking and then the same odor would show up in the bathroom sometimes (please keep your bathroom humor to yourself), I began to realize that the smell was coming from inside the wall that the closet and bathroom share.

That's when I had my revelation, which, after talking with a few others about it, I think is probably correct:

There's a dead rodent in there.

Now, having some experience with extracting rodents from a wall (see flashback post tomorrow), I considered just going in there myself and taking the danged thing out. But I hesitate to do that because I don't really know where in the wall it might be. I talked with the landlords, but they're not quite sure what to do either. I figure the smell will eventually go away and in the meantime, I bought air freshener for the closet and under the bathroom sink where it's connected to that wall.

On the bright side, it's totally not noticeable with the closet door closed (unless of course, you go into the closet) and occasionally in the bathroom. Plus, I think the worst of it might have passed. But then again, I don't really know what the staying power of rotting rodent is.

So there you go. Mystery solved.