I Know, No Picture, Didn't Happen

[Jim Koepke]

About a week ago something smelt bad in my shop. The cat sometimes hides and ends up spending the night so I kept a watch on where I stepped. It was only in one part of the shop and the smell diminished.

This wasn't on my mind today when the wife wanted me to plug a heater in over where she was doing some work. So I unplugged an unused lamp and noticed something at the top corner of the outlet. Many of the outlets in the shop are not covered. A former owner who wired the place set some of the boxes too far back in the wall for covers. I thought it was a cocoon or spider's nest. Looking closely it was a mouse. It looked alive. Poking it with a piece of wood indicated it wasn't. I was about to extract it with pliers when I realized it was on the hot side of the box. Sure enough, it was up against the mounting bracket and its paw was on the hot lug on the outlet. Carefully removed the little rodent and put him in the circular file.

The Cat is usually a pretty good mouser. Guess this one just snuck by.

jtk

[Lee Schierer]

You know they make electrical box extenders for filling in the gaps when the boxes aren't mounted correctly so you can add cover plates.:confused:

[Jim Becker]

Aside from the comedy of the situation, particularly for the mouse...I agree with Lee. It's easy to rectify the issue with the box depth and get covers on those outlets for safety. Cheap too!

[Kent A Bathurst]

Hmmmm....interesting.

Washington State has always intrigued me in that they not only still have the death penalty for capital cases, but they let the condemmed choose the vehicle - haning or lethal injection. Whch, I assume, equates to mouse trap or rat poison. Your critter chose The Third Way - electrocution. WHich is a pretty ironic version of civil protest, no?