Revenge of the R^2, Part II: Retribution

Note:  This is part II in a 3-part series entitled "Revenge of the R^2."  For part one, please see this post.

They tried to asphyxiate us.

Really.

After bothering management several days in a row (including camping in their office – "Sorry, the smell is too overpowering to work in my apartment.  Is it okay if I work in here again today?"), they finally sent someone over.  The first go-round was pretty exciting.  The maintenance guy couldn't speak a lick English, and my Spanish is limited to "tu imagen esta grabada en mi alma," which probably wasn't very appropriate at the time, so I had a 3rd party translate over the phone.  I think quite a bit was lost in translation, but finally, after many confusing looks, my phone-a-friend told me to gesture wildly at the location I thought the mice were and say, "aquí."  I don't know how well I was understood, but when I came back later that evening, it seemed like they must have figured it out.  The following is an actual shot from our apartment.

Of course (how could I expect anything any different?) they were unable to find any mice nests in their inspection of the vents, so they left it open overnight to close the next day.  It wasn't all just bad news, because 1) the workers were having a hard time standing the smell (now they knew I wasn't just whining), so 2) they left a bottle of fairly powerful air freshener.

Unfortunately (this is sounding like a book I read as a young child), while the smell from the freshener is definitely overpowering, it is neither "freshening" nor "stress-reducing."  Now I have identified two smells that are migraine-inducing (another "fortunately"?).

When they came back the next day to replace the sheetrock, they had a english speaker with them, so I was able to ask a few questions.  Had they found anything in the vents?  No.  Were they going to look for them in more places?  No again.  Were they going to do anything else?  Not really.  Can't they tell this smell renders our apartment uninhabitable?  Uhh...  I mean, this is almost worse than living without water! (I kid, of course, but only slightly)  Yeah, sorry.  Well, there's a possibility that the air vents are what's causing the problem.  Could they at least just change the air filter?  The rodent/"freshener" combination is doing weird things to my mind.  We'll see what we can do.

And then, miracle of miracles, they found it.  A rather large mouse's skeleton in our closet AC vent.  From the looks of it, this thing was probably the size of a small elephant at its peak, and could have taken on several traps single-handedly.  (If you want to see the picture, I've included it offline here.  You might need to rotate it, and it's definitely not for the faint of heart.  Consider yourself warned.)


With the mouse gone, though, our problems still weren't solved.  The roaches hadn't left (management informed us our neighbors were the problem--which was a mixed relief/disappointment), and everything now reeked of dead mice and anti-fresh deodorizer.  We decided then and there we were getting out – and not just out of the apartment, out of the complex (ask anyone who lived there:  this wasn't just a "grass is always greener" scenario!)

Next time:  Part III:  Reinstated