Conundrum

*Disclaimer: If you're an animal rights activist or a person who loves all animals equally, or a person who loves mice and thinks they're adorable, cute creatures, this post is not for you. Please don't read it. I mean it. Honestly, I don't want your advice on this one, and this post may make you angry, so just do yourself a favor and skip this one.*

Mice. On Cinderella, they're these cute little creatures that wear clothes, help clean and sew a dress. In real life, they're creatures who take over your house, poop everywhere, and walk all over your clean dishes. I'm still not over the slow cooker incident. I'm not sure if I shared it on here or not, but for those curious people, I will write a shortened version in this post.

One night, very soon after we moved into this house from Mom-in-law's house, knew we had mice. I worked really hard to put all of our food into plastic, airtight containers, (I mean, $150 worth of plastic containers hard) cleaned my kitchen to where I could not see a speck of food out of place, and vacuumed my living room until I thought my arms were going to fall off. The only problem was that I as I was scrubbing my slow cooker, I couldn't get all of the stuck on food off. I tried. Really I did. I scrubbed and scrubbed at that thing, but sometimes, all scrubbing is useless unless you let the water do the job of softening it up over night. So, I filled up the slow cooker bowl with water, put some detergent in it, left it in the sink, and went to bed. The next day, I picked it up to dump out the water, and as the soap suds poured down the drain, there, floating in the water was a dead mouse. Yes. Dead Mouse. AAAAHHHHHCCCC. Rob swears that when I saw it and screamed, I also jumped at least 2 feet off the ground when I jumped backward. Knowing myself, I probably did.

So, with the slow cooker incident in the back of your mind, know that I sticky traps and mice cubes all over my house. I don't have the kind that snap shut only because I don't want one of my kids to find one and have it snap on their fingers. I have no qualms about breaking the mouse's leg and letting it die. Some people want to just catch it, and let it go back outside. I don't. He found his way in once, and mice can do a maze over and over again. I don't want him to find his way back inside again. Also, I don't want to get close enough to actually touching the mouse to let it go. Into the trash can they go. Safe and snug inside their little mouse cubes.

So, here in lies the question. There have been mice in this house since we moved in. I know that the ovens worked when the people before us lived here. However, the mice got behind the ovens in the time between the previous family and our family. I think that they might have gotten to some of the wiring.

Not knowing that the ovens do not actually work, I'm afraid to call the landlord and tell them that they may be broken. On top of that, I'm afraid that if I call him to come see if the ovens, work, he may turn them on to find out. If he does, and the mice did get to the wiring, we wouldn't know it until something drastic happened. When we moved in, we went and bought a tiny toaster oven. I successfully made cupcakes in it the other day. I had to cook 7 cupcakes at a time in the individual metal cupcake wrappers. It took four times through the toaster oven before they were all cooked, so in the 22 minutes they would cook in a real oven, it took almost an hour and a half of just baking to finish them in the toaster oven. I sort of figured it was a small price to pay to have the house not burn down. However, I am wondering how in the world I am ever going to make Jackie's birthday cake this year. I could go bake it at Mom R's house, or I could just buy one. Homemade cakes tend to taste better than store bought cakes, and asking about Mom R's kitchen makes me slightly uncomfortable. Should I just break down and call the landlord? What if we check it, and it seems alright, but when the wires really get hot from the oven being on for awhile, we find out we were wrong? Also, what if we don't have the mice gone, and they do more damage than we think they should? So, there is the conundrum. What do you think? Call the Landlord, buy a cake, or ask Mom R?