Apple Bluetooth Mighty Mouse Won't Scroll Down

No, the spambots have not taken control of my blog, I am offering a public service announcement.

When my mouse started breaking down, it did so in a peculiar enough way to make me google the symptoms. The mouse wheel/ball thing refused to scroll down. Up? fine. Side-to-side? also fine.

Upon googling it I found several webforums discussing the subject, and perhaps it was user error on my part, but I never found an adequate solution. Some people suggested vigorous upside-down scrolling, cleaning it with isopropyl alcohol, and even jimmying at it with paper.

Finally the situation grew desperate enough for me to start at naught and work my way up. I tried everything and it failed again to fix it.

Then I noticed another post about taking hold of the mouse and rolling the mouse wheel/ball around on a fresh piece of paper. Perhaps the alcohol loosened the grease, or the vigorous scrolling did, but the mouse wheel/ball left several visible streaks on the paper. The filth having been thus extracted, I can now scroll down.

Maybe this will get some google hits for the next person to have this problem.