Things Get Pooped On

I'm trying to organize everything - I think I'm nesting (and not the only one). Last weekend we took 3 loads to the dump ($5 bucks a load to dump whatever - cardboard, bags of used diapers, rotting human corpses; no one was checking) and 1 big trip to the DI (Mormon thrift store). I made my husband turn our stupid useless coat closet into a shelf-containing craft cupboard. We need craft supply storage more than we we need coat storage; plus we have a coat hook by the door, much more convenient.

As I was sorting and purging, I took an armload of stuff I'm not ready to sort out to the garage (my husband has great plans to finish organizing the garage this weekend, so I'm procrastinating the purge, I guess, just not quite ready to toss them out officially yet). While out there, I noticed a bag with what seemed to be some craft supplies. In reality, it had a few scrap booking papers, a CD/DVD scratch fixer thing, and my wedding album. Oh, and some raffia. And then I noticed a considerable amount of mouse droppings - see someone else was nesting, too.

Whenever I think of mouse dropping I think Hantavirus and I think of that X-files episode where some lady's face melted off when she thought she was exposed to hantavirus through mouse droppings. My face is, fortunately, still intact.

However, my poor beautiful wedding album cover, painstakingly hand-made by my perfectionist mother-in-law, had yellow mouse pee and crap on it. I had to take the sheet-protected sheets out and throw the poor cover thing away. Then wash my hands several, several times and break out the Clorox Clean-up WITH BLEACH. Lest any faces melt off.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I used to work at CRA - Clinical Research Associates - a dental research institute. Dentists have to keep things clean and sterile; mouths are a dirty business. When I was there, a strange but amazing lady whose name has slipped my mind was in charge of infection control testing. She got to grow bacteria on petrie dishes and even had one of those chambers you put your hands in gloves and work inside the glass chamber. VERY loud alarms would go off to warn the world when the electricity went off and the chambers might be exposing their vile contents. She tested a LOT of supposed germ killing products. The only two commercially available products which had a highly consistent broad spectrum kill of germs virus and bacteria were (drum roll please): Lysol spray and good old bleach.

Next time YOU are cleaning up something poo related and you really want to make sure the germs will be eradicated and you will be safe, don't grab your "green" cleaner, your pleasant smelling wipes, or that spray you got suckered into by the door-to-door salesman guy who said "Yeah, it kills everything and cleans glass, carpet, and won't harm your pets or kids." Grab something with ethyl alcohol or sodium hypochlorite. Those are your trusted germ killing friends - not JUST the Lysol or Clorox brand names, the actual ingredients.

AND don't feel too bad when you have to throw pooped-on stuff away. It's really better that way. We all have too much STUFF anyway. Plus, nowadays, while you can't look at digital pictures without electricity and a computer, mice can't poop on digital images. CD's yes, but CD are much easier to clean and even sterilize than paper and fabric.


Now to see if I can't get Google to show me the actual image of the lady from the X-files episode whose face melted ... come on Google, don't let me down!