| What IS that funky smell?
Prologue:
My fiance's 80 year old mother lives with us. She's...well..forgetful. To say the least. But she likes to do the dishes after dinner. Even with a dishwasher, she'll fill the sink and spend the next 45 minutes washing three plates, 12 utensils, and pot and pan or two. Then spend 20 minutes celebrating Chinese New Year putting everything away in the wrong drawers.
On to the story...
A couple of days ago, we started smelling a fairly rank odor between the kitchen and the dining room. Like dead meat. Since we support a population of five cats, each prone, to a certain extent, to displaying their captured, usually still alive rodent trophies to us proudly, we suspected a deceased mouse or mole somewhere on the premises of La Maison d'James.
First, I checked the crawlspace down below. Plenty of dust, the occasional cat litter area, but no carcasses, so far as I could see...or smell.
I spent much of the next day or so sniffing at the heat registers, trying to pin down the source of the odor. Nothing was conclusive. We checked around the kitchen again, under the cabinets, behind the fridge, even moved the pots and pans around in their base cabinets. Nothing.
Daily, the miasma grew worse. We pulled up carpets, we moved every piece of furniture with 30 feet to check the dark corners and cubbyholes where a dying animal would be prone to..well, be prone.
Today, it got so nauseating that you could barely go into the kitchen. Again, we pulled the fridge, sniffed the registers, and moved the pots and pans..oddly, one small pot seemed heavier than it should have. I cautiously pulled it out, and it seemed we had found the source.
Immediately, I evacuated the neighborhood, for safety reasons. Small children and seniors were moved to a secure biohazard-proof location. The ERT team from the nearby nuclear plant was called in to stand by.
I tentatively lifted the lid on the small saucepan. The sight that greeted my astonished eye was one I fear may trouble my dreams for years.
A greenish cloud of vapour rose from the milky concotion that, a week ago, had been some sort of fowl. Calling ahead for oxygen and respirators, I dashed outside and tossed the goo as far into the river as I could. As it hit, a roiling, boiling maelstrom rose from the water, like those National Geographic specials on "Pirhanas of the Amazon attacking a capybyra that wandered into the stream".
Apparently, Mom had finished washing the pots, excluding one with a lid still on it. As she dried them and put the clean pots on the kitchen table, the unclean one blended into the crowd. They all got put away in their normal base cabinet, the one full of uneaten chicken breast way in the back...
Nature took over from there.
Phew. I may have to have my nose hairs surgically removed to totally eliminate the nascent aroma that still lingers....
Just thought I'd share that with ya...
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"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard P. Feynman
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