Vanisle_BC
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Stinky mystery - what's this?

Yesterday when I opened a drawer in my workshop I was hit by a strong & obnoxious smell. It clung to some of the items in the drawer and washing them in a 'Mr Clean' solution didn't get rid of it. I assumed something like a mouse was responsible but when I emptied the contents, what I found was my microfiber cleaning cloth all rumpled up and very stinky. It contained some unidentifiable stuff like crumbled soil particles, plus 3 small coccoon-like objects, each with a hole in it. Here's a photo of one, alongside ‎a dime for scale. It doesn't smell but that's after dumping cloth & everything into a basin with bleach :).
Mystry coccoon.jpg
(The hole doesn't go through to the other end)

Does anyone know what this is, and what caused the horrible smell?

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applestar
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My immediate thought was that it was indeed a mouse and it had made a winter nest with your cloth. Not sure what that thing with a hole in it is but could have been some kind of food source? Stinky pee and crumbled poop?

Vanisle_BC
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applestar wrote:My immediate thought was that it was indeed a mouse and it had made a winter nest with your cloth.
One or two things make me dubious about the mouse conclusion. Nothing in the drawer was shredded or gnawed; nothing brought in from outside except those odd little 'cocoons' - too irregular to be human artifacts. No food stash, seed husks etc. Also I thought I had a good idea what mouse habitat smells like but this was much worse .....

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digitS'
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VanIsle,

The distant garden is irrigated with field sprinklers. A lot of odd things show up in those pipes following the off-season, when they aren't connected. Flushing them after they are laid out always brings out evidence of mice. However, the most recent odd things that came through the last sprinkler in the run were insects: Wasps! While the valve was open and the sprinkler obviously plugged, I'm out there with a wire, poking at it and getting wet! The dead wasps began to be pushed through, one after another until the stream increased enough to function. I then stepped away and was left imagining the wet, shredded paper nest being blown out into the garden, somewhere.

Anyway, there are cherry trees nearby. Soon, robins will be carrying down ripe fruit to eat on fence posts where the sprinkler pipes are stored over the winter. They don't eat the seeds. Those will be found on top of the fence posts and on the ground. The mice carry them into the pipes where they cause me some problems, every year. The mice chew a small hole in the seeds and eat the interior but those seeds will stick in the sprinklers.

Do you think that it might be a hollow cherry seed!?

Steve

Vanisle_BC
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digitS' wrote:VanIsle,

The distant garden is irrigated with field sprinklers. A lot of odd things show up in those pipes following the off-season, when they aren't connected. Flushing them after they are laid out always brings out evidence of mice. However, the most recent odd things that came through the last sprinkler in the run were insects: Wasps! While the valve was open and the sprinkler obviously plugged, I'm out there with a wire, poking at it and getting wet! The dead wasps began to be pushed through, one after another until the stream increased enough to function. I then stepped away and was left imagining the wet, shredded paper nest being blown out into the garden, somewhere.

Anyway, there are cherry trees nearby. Soon, robins will be carrying down ripe fruit to eat on fence posts where the sprinkler pipes are stored over the winter. They don't eat the seeds. Those will be found on top of the fence posts and on the ground. The mice carry them into the pipes where they cause me some problems, every year. The mice chew a small hole in the seeds and eat the interior but those seeds will stick in the sprinklers.

Do you think that it might be a hollow cherry seed!?

Steve
Very interesting, Steve. Now that you mention it, those objects are about the size & shape of cherry stones. I'm not aware of any local cherry trees but -aha!- my wife collects small wild plums for her HP sauce recipe (ask and I'll post it.) She discards the stones - just like little cherry stones - on our compost pile.

A couple of things surprise me: That mice could inhabit your irrigation pipe - what's the diameter? - and that there's anything edible, inside the fruit stones, which could be eaten out through such a tiny hole. But I'm suspending disbelief: Your description & theory seem to fit the evidence here.

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applestar
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I’m remembering I also see plum stones with a little hole like that under our plum tree.....

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digitS'
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VanIsle,

they are 4" and 30' long pipes.

Drowned mice have been flushed out of them, some years.

Steve



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