Filthy!

[AlanBeckett]

On the subject of unfortunate creatures I had a similar problem a few weeks ago. I always leave a full watering can in the greenhouse so that when I water the seedlings I've got a supply which is at greenhouse temperature. So, I wandered down there in the morning, opened up, picked up the can and attempted to water - nothing. I pulled off the rose and there was a terrible smell. There were not one but two mice stuck in the pipe. I expect that they had fallen in and the obvious escape route was up the pipe. However, the size of the pipe at the end and the rose stopped them, and that was that
Alan

[Andy - G8MNM]

The worst I have had was a VCR where the dog had urinated in it. I got it to look at a month or so later when it was too late.
The pee had eaten through the legs of a number of chips and the smell was horrible!
Similarly a laptop suffering from the same problem when the lid was left open and the cat used it as a litter tray!
Too late again to fix it - as before green growths around the chips and legs and print eaten away.
The worst dust problem I came across was at a University I worked at. We maintained the PCs around the campus. It was not uncommon to find some 20mm of thick dust blanketing the motherboards in the engineering computer labs.

Andy

[Paula A]

Found a mouse hard, dried out and carbonized stuck across the thermostat terminals of the pub glass washer.. after removing mummified mouse it always needed a bash on the thermostat to heat up, and would then boil happily away until the power was removed.. again needing a thump to get it heating again...

I think the worst TV was one somebody brought me as a teenager.. not sure where they had it stored but as soon as I lifted it the bottom fell off exposing a great growth of white fur, some unpleasant dripping brown mushrooms and things which looked like large wrinkled brown ears.. it went out the back instantly.. I wish I hadn't thought of that.. put me right off my lunch now..

[Andy - G8MNM]

Sounds like dry rot
Except dry rot isn't dry atall. When it is well developed it has lots of fruiting bodies (mushrooms) and many white tendrils (to collect water) it can even burrow through mortar to get to a water source!

Andy

[fido]

I've been doing a horrible job this morning. I'm having to throw out all my used appliance spares in preparation to moving. A lot of them are stored in my old corrugated iron shed. I've known for a while that mice have been getting in there but had not appreciated quite how much mess they had made. They must be climbing up the base timbers in the gaps formed by the corrugations. I need to fill each corrugation with mortar but that will be quite a big job. Basically I am sorting stuff into 3 piles, plastic parts to go in the normal bin, metal parts to go to the scrap metal people and things like nuts, bolts and jubilee clips which I will keep. All the parts are amongst mouse nest materials, mostly shredded plastic bags. There is also the odd putrefied mouse corpse in amongst the stuff for good measure! The smell is actually not as bad as you would expect so I guess most of the mouse activity was a while ago. The worst area was an old cooker where they had been nesting amongst the insulation material.