So, the silver lining is, I got a new dishwasher out of the deal.

It was an emergency replacement.
Not that I can’t do the dishes by hand, or anything, but when we went to empty the old one the last time, it was found, inexplicably, to contain what appeared to be mouse poop.
Inside. With the clean dishes.
I have no idea how a mouse or other rodent came to be in my dishwasher, but from the looks of it, the creature has/had serious intestinal issues or it brought its entire extended family with it.
I mean, it was a lot of guano for something having been in there a maximum of 24 hours.
My husband says there were little scratch marks on the inside of the door, indicating the creature was trying to get out.
OMG.
And, he says, there’s no sign of the critter now, suggesting it may somehow have disappeared into the machine’s inner workings and/or drowned in 180-degree water and vanished down the pipes.
A horrible end, no-doubt.
I’m not that familiar with the shadowy world of wild mice, but I fervently hope word has spread to the local rodent community that our house – specifically our appliances – are not hospitable places and should forever be avoided. We need to get that message out about our cabinets, too.
I guess this explains why the cat was staring at the dishwasher so intently the other day. I asked her what she was doing and she didn’t answer, so I assumed she was daydreaming about “the great hunt.”
She does that, sometimes.
Now we know.
Needless to say, however, I was unwilling to get too close to the old dishwasher/torture chamber/mouse tomb, and would never again have felt comfortable using it, or standing too close to it, so, we needed a new one.
Period.
It’s OK, though. We’ve been putting off the inevitable with this machine for a while – ever since the hinge on the little soap door broke.
Did you know that they design those things so that if that tiny, little part malfunctions or breaks, there is no way to fix it without completely dismantling the machine, which can never be perfectly reconstructed, rendering it inoperable?
Built-in, guaranteed obsolescence.
Brilliant.
Anyway, the new one was bought and installed expertly by my husband yesterday and the old one properly discarded, and I never again want to think about what became of that mouse.
End of discussion.

Have PoliticalMavens.com delivered to your inbox in a daily digest by clicking here