Dead Mouse Removal Guide ™

By: Dan Olson

(disclaimer: This page assumes that you have a crappy job with very low pay. If you do not have a job like this, this page has no useful information for you and you have no need to read further.)

Step 1: At your crappy job with low pay, you will probably be asked to perform many stupid and disgusting tasks. One of these tasks will probably be to clean the breakroom. This is normally a very crappy job, but with the addition of a dead mouse or two, it can be a downright disgusting job. After you have been assigned to clean the breakroom, it is advised that you secure the neccesary materials, namely a mop and a broom. After you get those, it is time to go to work.

Step 2: As you walk into the breakroom, you will notice a lot or muddy footprints and possibly even some cigarette ashes and pieces of food on the floor. Don't be alarmed: that is normal for this room. Your fellow workers realize that you have to clean the breakroom, and they will do whatever they possibly can (accidently, if you ask them) to mess up the breakroom so you have to clean it up more often. The first thing that you should do is to sweep up any pieces of food or dirt off the floor. It makes it much easier to to mop if you don't have any pieces of eating debris on the floor. Make sure you move any TV carts or garbage cans away from the wall to sweep behind them.

Step 3: After you move the TV carts and/or the garbage cans away from the wall, it is possible that you will find a squashed flat, dead mouse halfway up the wall. How did it get there you wonder? That's simple. One of your co-workers obviously caught a live mouse and held it halfway up the wall, while another of your co-workers pushed the TV cart and/or garbage can against the wall, leaving the poor helpless animal squashed flat up against the wall. It is possible that this mouse has been there for upwards of two weeks, depending on how often you actually move the TV carts and/or garbage cans away from the wall and sweep behind them.

Step 4: After you have located the source of the awful smell that now fills the breakroom, and won't leave no matter how long you leave the exhaust fan on, it is time to get out the big guns. Find something, anything, that smells even remotely good, and spray the rest of the can into the air. Hopefully, you picked an almost full can of potpourri, but if you couldn't find one, a can of John Deere all-purpose cleaner works just as well, although the ammonia smell probably will not be all that refreshing, even though it is better than dead mouse smell.

Step 5: Now it is time to get rid of the dead mouse. Get one of the mechanics to loan you a pair of pliers. Don't tell them what they are for. Mechanics usually don't like their pliers to be used to pull a dead mouse off a wall. Use the pliers to pull the dead mouse off the wall. A lot of fur will remain stuck to the wall, but that is normal. Now, you need to get the fur off the wall. Hopefully, your crappy job with low pay has a bathroom. Bathrooms are excellent sources of cleaning materials, but also have a lot of different choices. Don't pick anything that has "Fresh Scent" on the label. We are looking for something tough, and "Fresh Scent" just doesn't cut it. Hopefully, something with "Acid" on the label will be in there. Everyone knows acid is tough, so that's what we will use. Grab the bottle and start squirting it at the fur that was left after the dead mouse was removed from the wall. Another bad smell will come out from the area where the dead mouse was. Ignore it. That smell means that the acid is working, and it is a desirable smell. The fur will run down in streams with the acid, and form a pool of what looks like acid with squashed flat, dead mouse fur in it. You will have to clean this up later, but for right now, leave it there.

Step 6: Now that you have the fur off the wall, you can begin mopping. You should find a floor cleaner with a pleasant, lemony, smell to cover up the dead mouse smell. If you cannot find that, spray some more all-purpose cleaner into the air. As you begin mopping the pool of acid with the dead mouse fur in it, you will notice that the acid will begin to bubble when the floor cleaner hits it. This is just an acid/base reaction, and it is totally normal although not neccesarily desirable. Just after you make this great discovery, and are laughing about how funny that mouse did look sitting there, a co-worker that especially likes to give you crap about your shyness toward the opposite sex will come in. He will make some kind of stupid comment on how good it smells in the breakroom, and then introduce you to the female person that he brought in with him, introducing her as "Stupid". You will think that her name really is stupid, because the great amount of ammonia in the air has somewhat dulled your normally razor sharp wit. You will probably stand there and turn red, or do something similarly useless, instead of saying "hi" or some other universally accepted form of saying hello to someone you don't know.

Step 7: After what seems like an eternity, your co-worker and "Stupid" will leave, leaving you alone with the task of finishing the breakroom cleaning and mouse removal process. You should finish cleaning up the acid pool with the dead mouse fur in it. After you get that done, you can move on to the rest of the floor. The rest of the floor will go pretty smoothly, since all you have to do is get the muddy footprints off of it. Once you have finished, you can put away your mop and broom, and look at the sparkling clean, dead mouse free breakroom that you just finished with. Pat yourself on the back. You have done something to be proud of.