Death in the Afternoon

Death stinks.

No, no – I mean it. Death really stinks. Last weekend, as we were congratulating ourselves over our near miss with Hurricane Rita, our sweet pooch found a playmate under the house. Unfortunately, Blaze doesn’t play well with others.

Monday afternoon we came home from our first day of work post-Rita, and noticed an odd smell in the house. I thought it was a dead mouse in the wall. We had a dead raccoon in the yard a while pack, and the smell was reminiscent of that poor thing. Another one of Blaze’s playmates.

We didn’t think too much of it, and went to bed. The next morning the smell didn’t seem so bad, so I thought it was going away.

That night when we got home, however, it was worse. We sniffed and searched, trying to find out the source of the stench. No avail, so we burned some candles.

The next morning, again, the smell was almost gone. Hmm. Seems like we need a problem solver on this case. Doreen crawled under the house to try and find the problem, but she could smell nothing there. (Doreen is the small one in the family, you see, so she is the one who goes under the house. I am the one who puts things on shelves and carries things around)

That night (Wednesday) again, the smell was back. Now Doreen had a theory – it was coming from the Air Conditioner. Yipes! We turned it off, and let it sit a while. We then turned it back on, and yes indeed! Death from the Air Conditioner vents! It was too late to go under the house, so we skedaddled upstairs to get away from the smell.

The next morning the smell was gone until the AC kicked in again. Then it was worse than ever. Doreen crawls under the house again to see if there was a break in the duct work. Yes, she said, from under the house, a break in the duct work indeed. She was looking to see if a small animal had crawled into the duct, when she spotted the four day dead opossum, looking like four day dead mammal would look. And she didn’t vomit! I was really proud of her.

So I volunteered to go to the hardware store and buy some lime to cover up the carcass. I got to Southland Hardware, and they told me that they had run out of 10 lb bags of lime. So I opted for a 50 lb bag. (it was only $8.00)

I got home with the lime, and Doreen (bless her soul!) when under the house AGAIN! She is too good for words. She covered the thing with lime, and we called the AC folks to come and fix their error. By the time we got home that evening, the stench was completely gone!

That lime is something.