Anyone found anything nasty in their pantry lately?

[MoWin]

Or am I the only one? LOL

Ladies, I had been smelling something and having these little bugs that are kind of like fruit flies, but dart instead of just flying around. Well, I finally found the culprit today.    Part of a sack of rotten potatoes.  Uggg, it was so nasty. (shuddering) Oh well, at least they are now out of the house and things smell better in here. 

I really must do a better job at keeping on top of this. We just can't afford to let things spoil. 

Blessings,
Winona

[Alice]

Yup, Winona! We also had that same bad smell and it also was a couple of bad potatoes that were responsible. We also had the flies but they are gone now that the potatoes are gone. These were potatoes we bought at the store and they got bad quicker than we ate them so they must have been old at the store already. I think I'll skip buying potatoes for a while until the weather gets a bit cooler. We get so much other goodies from my dad that I think going without potatoes for while won't hurt us at all.

Alice

[Leahsgarden]

Any time we cook a whole chicken in the crockpot and make broth afterwards, we attract about 20 flies. Most of them get trapped between the screen door and back door. It's a death wish to open it from inside, we have to go around and open the screen door first. And despite all the care, half a dozen flies still manage to find their way inside.

Can you tell that there's some broth simmering right now?

[Rooney]

Well not flies on potatoes, but instead mice on rice. (yuck!)   This was in a storage room we don't get into often and I actually forgot that rice was in there.  But they managed to ruin three 25 pound bags of it.  I hate wasting stuff. (Stupid me left it in bags instead of putting it in buckets)   But this had to be disposed of.  Anyone else having mice issues?  It must be a problem because most of our local stores are out of traps.

[calicogirl]

I had a small bag of the fingerling potatoes go bad. I hate rotten potato smell! And the flies left when I threw the bag away and cleaned out the potato bin.

Lindsay,  we have little field mice try to make a home in the house during winter months, but with 4 cats, we don't have too big of a problem.

Teresa

[MoWin]

I always said that if a mouse moves in, it has a death wish. We have 2 cats and a little Pom who also loves to chase mice. 

Teresa, isn't that rotten potato smell hideous!  I was so glad to track that nasty smell down. 

Blessings,
Winona

[Shelly]

That same thing (with the rotten potatoes) happened about 6 years ago, but I remember it well.  I've been super aware of how old my potatoes are ever since.    Worse smell and grossest tiny flies ever. 

We have a 140 year old house and the mice that come with it.  We have 4 cats and they still come in.  2 of our cats are good mousers, but they're getting up in years.  The only thing they've gotten into in our pantry so far is a small bag of chocolate that got tossed on the shelf and forgotten instead of being put in glass.  When i picked it up about a week later, we had a bag of poop and shredded wrappers instead.

[Alice]

But chocolate will kill mice if they eat it, correct? That's what I heard. Not sure if that is true or not. I had a bag of dark chocolate in my work bag (which was on the floor) and months later we moved the refrigerator around and found one of those dark chocolate pieces under the frig. with mice teeth marks. But we never saw a mouse so maybe it got out but not sure if it died. Makes me cringe to think a mouse was in my work bag and I was taking it back and forth to work with or without a mouse in there and maybe it got loose in my van, oh no! This is horrible.

Alice

[MoWin]

So sorry Alice, but I laughed out loud. I am not really afraid of mice, but certainly do not want them near me. Over at the other house, I once had a mouse jump out of the drawer I kept serving spoons, spatulas, etc. in. It jumped right onto my arm. I almost died. The kids thought something serious had gotten hold of me. LOL I had to spend the day cleaning my drawers and wiping everything down. Then sat a trap and caught that booger that night. 

We have fields all around us, so this time of year, they start trying to get it. So far, we have not had any succeed over here at the new place. Let's keep it that way. 

Blessings,
Winona

[Rooney]

Anyone got any ideas of how to get rid of the mice and keep the mice gone?  I am just tired of seeing all the nasty droppings behind and under stuff.  We actually live in the middle of a field, (my mom says ya live in a field, ya gonna have field mice).  I do blame the mice on the kids constantly leaving the back door open or just going in and out it.  We thought they were gone last month, not so.  We always think they are gone and they always reappear.  Maybe this is just par for the course when you live in the country.   However this year even people in the city we know even have them.