This story comes from 1996. I left on my first business trip the weekend of the Blizzard of 1996 – actually just got off the ground that Sunday AM, but it was the first time my wife, kids and I had ever been away from each other like that.
So my wife asks her younger sister if she wants to stay with her and the kiddies until I return on Wednesday and she does. During the time she’s there, my wife notices a smell in our living room and thinks, “Gee, did my sister not take a shower. Does she smell that bad?” But then she does take a shower and the smell is still there.
I get off the plane on Wednesday, call home and am told, by the wife, that she thinks there’s a dead mouse in the living room; we had been having mouse problems in our apartment. I get home and start searching, finally finding the dead critter under our love seat. I promptly run into the bathroom and vomit. Now, I’m thinking, what to do, so I call my father-in-law, who tells me I should just take some paper towels or newspapers, pick it up and throw it out. I ask him if he’ll come over and do it (mind you, there’s 25+ inches of snow still on the ground); he says no.
Brilliant me, I get out the Kenmore and vacuum the little dead guy up. The sound of the mouse going up into the canister prompts me to run to the bathroom and vomit again. How got the vacuum cleaner bag out to the garbage, I don’t remember, but we still talk about the whole incident to this day.