Cleaning the Garage

Today I wanted to get started on cleaning up my garage. When we moved in we had everything really organized but now two years later it looks like a tornado hit the place. I have three car garage but one of them is sectioned off and I use that as my home Gym. That was fairly clean and only took me an hour or so to get everything looking good. Once that was over I went to lunch at El Pollo Loco and while I was eating I noticed a dollar bill under the tape but it turned out to be a ten dollar bill. I actually thought about taking it up to one of the employees but then realized that they would probably just keep it themselves so I pocketed it.

After lunch I headed back home and started on my other side and much large part of the garage. About and hour in I bent down and heard a loud rip and noticed that I tore the entire front of my shorts. As I was moving boxes I noticed a ton of mouse droppings and knew there must be a ton of mice hiding out in here.

About 90% of my things are in large plastic containers but there is still stuff in cardboard boxes. So as I was moving things around I would everything to see if anything was damaged and when I got to the box with my childhood stuff animals I found where the mice had nested. All of my stuff animals smelled or urine and had mouse droppings all over the place. I was so bummed as some of those were animals were very special to me so I threw away a third and opted to try and wash the other two-thirds.  I didn't find any mice in that box but when I went to move a few moving blankets one of them had two mice tucked in and the other had one. I managed to contain them and move them outside where I let them run away.

About five hours in I called it a night, it was super dark and I was getting tired. As I checked my emails and such I got a tweet from my buddy Chris saying "@Jedisaber: @Geekyfanboy don't try to save them. Hantavirus is no joke. Say goodbye and protect better next time." This stopped me in my track and I had to look up the Hantavirus as I had heard of it but really didn't know anything about it. Come to find out that it's this horrible virus that attacked your lungs and is carried in the urine and droppings of deer mice. They advise to not disturb nests or push the dust around. Well I just spent the last five hours digging through urine and dropping laced boxes and stuff animals. I also took a air blowers and blew all the dust (and other things into the air) so much so that I was sneezing because I was inhaling so much of it. I used no protecting not knowing that what I was doing could be fatal. This virus has no cure and if caught early had a 50/50 survival rate.

Now the odds of the mice that are in my garage having this virus and then passing it along in their urine/droppings and me inhaling the infected dust is slim to none but you never know. So I spent the rest of the night worried and trying to research as much as I can. I know I'm not going to sleep tonight!! And I'll be worried for the next six weeks as it can take up to six weeks to show any signs of the infection.