Does this description make sense?

[wa2ise]

Over in Audiokarma's tube audio forum, someone had an audio amp that had a dead mouse inside it. Said mouse had crawled under the chassis inside the amp, and found some internally exposed powerline voltage, and thus was electrocuted. This was at some terminal strips (metal posts attached to a phenolic plastic strip) with bare wire connections feeding the powerline to the amp's power transformer. Before the mouse bought the farm it had chewed some wax off nearby wax paper capacitors. This audio amp could easily have been that color TV set in your novel.

Electricians occasionally find fried mice and snakes inside circuit breaker panels. Tends to be stinky and yucky...