Dead Mouse

…you think you wouldn’t know it when you smell it… but you do. Death in the house. It starts out like really stinky feet, or a mildewed towel or a bad diaper, just smelly, so…you take the first line of defense…you clean.

And for a minute anyway, the cleaners overpower the stink and you feel relieved…you got it…you can breathe again. But then it comes back, worse than before and now it is in every breath you take, and you look for the dog poo…but there is none, and then you are driving the kids to school and it hits you…DEAD MOUSE! There is a dead mouse in my Old Country House. I know it, like I know it gets humid in the summer…it is unmistakable that stinky sweet putrid, I could barf smell.

I have called my husband at work. To ask him…”Did you once again, set it and forget it?” I know he did.

and so I went sniffing. I have a nose like no other. When I was pregnant is was unbearable, every smell, ones I already smell that no one smells, like snow, magnified. You would not think snow could smell but it does.