The airfyer and the mouse

lil bit of a cautionary tale

I got a new air fryer.

I know, I know. People say they don’t have the bench space. But I’m telling you, without sounding hyperbolic, it might be the greatest invention of the modern world. Possibly ever. I’ve become an air fryer evangelist. Whispering the gospel and trying to convert the unconverted, even though I can’t ever remember exactly what I make in it.

Everything? Chips? Broccoli? Sometimes schnitzel?

I no longer know how I used to cook things.

What I love is that you don’t have to watch it. You can walk away; you can live your life.

Until, of course, something goes horribly wrong.

The other week, I opened the drawer and saw something small and brown wedged inside, stuck between the base and the basket. I couldn’t see much. Just… a face.

It was clearly and disturbingly—and probably—a mouse.

Burnt and trapped and pressed up again the grate like it had tried to escape. I could almost hear it whispering, ‘Why?’

I was horrified. Even as I write this, weeks later, I still feel bad.

Now, earlier in the day, my kids had sheepishly confessed to eating the Easter eggs I’d put aside for my mum. (Long story. She was away over Easter, and I was planning to surprise her with a hunt.)

I couldn’t bring myself to deal with the air fryer situation, so when I picked the kids up from school, I told them about it. How I’d discovered a mouse and it was still there and ‘someone’ needed to remove it.

Then I asked if they still felt bad about the Easter eggs…

This is how my 12-year-old daughter ended up volunteering to carry the base of the air fryer, containing what we all believed was the corpse of a tiny creature, to the bin.

She was incredibly brave. (I stand by this: bravery isn’t about how scary the thing is, it’s about how scared you are.)

Armed only with a paper towel and her own grim resolve, she marched into the kitchen, pulled out the tray, peered in…

And saw a potato.

A potato.

A single, shrivelled baby chat. Crispy and compacted in just the right way to look like a dead mouse.

The good news: I didn’t have to throw out the air fryer.

The better news: the moral of the story is fairly clear. Sometimes you imagine the worst, and it turns out to be a leftover side dish.

(I mean, other times it is a mouse, but really won’t know until you look.)

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The second of my ‘commissioned’ artworks

(I can’t tell you how much water bottles have featured in my life since having children.)

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Finally, sign ups for my Make Like You Mean It course close on Monday.

This course is for writers and authors. Not so much total beginners. It covers: profile building + humour writing + finding a thing that you can grow alongside your book + interviewing people. Yeah, it’s niche! But also, will be fun. Check it out here.

Bye for now,

Katherine