I’ve been complaining to my wife the past couple of days about a weird sort of hot rubber smell, but ranker, like someone died while wearing a wetsuit. I thought perhaps it was coming from outside somewhere, since the windows have been open. Then I thought perhaps it had something to do with the new RAM I installed in the computer (hey, why not?). Then she found something disgusting on one of her shoes: something that looked like a mixture of egg and spinach and really nasty smelling.
Okay, she must have stepped in something outside, and into the washing machine you go. But this morning it was still there, and then I found it tracked through the house. WTF? Then I hear from the computer room:
“OHGODWHATISTHAT?!”
I briefly thought of my gun, but instead hobbled in there where she was pointing at something disgusting on the carpet; something that looked like scrambled eggs and spinach that had crawled up someone’s ass and died. First thought: cat barf. Nope, too big. Dead animal! Nope, no guts or hair. What the hell? As we cleaned it up, I spotted something with writing on it that said “Mexico”. Turns out, it’s a rotted mango that had been left in our shopping bag from about a week and a half ago, then fell out onto the carpet when we grabbed some other bags yesterday to go shopping. Who thinks a fruit is going to stink like someone died?
Please relate your own grocery misadventures so I don’t feel like a total moron.
I go (or used to, before moving) to a grocery store that doesn’t bag the groceries for you—shoppers have to bag their own. No biggie. I like it that way because I can bag things by eventual location: freezer stuff goes in one bag, pantry stuff goes in another, etc.
I once went grocery shopping with my kids in the middle of summer. Shopping went fine, came hope, was putting groceries away when one of the kids hollers from outside that needed me RIGHT NOW!!!11!!1! I don’t remember what it was, but whatever it was took me a while to deal with (I think a neighbor kid had came over to play and fallen, scraping their knee). By the time I was done I was sweating like a pig from the sun and needed something to drink. I went inside, got a drink, went and changed into shorts, and all was good in the world.
Next morning went to pour milk in my coffee. No milk. WTF? Looked around. No milk. With dread I went and checked the trunk of my car. Yep. Left the milk in the trunk from the day before… along with two bags of “fridge” stuff: cheese, yogurt, berries, sliced deli meat, and eggs. Probably $50 worth of groceries.
It didn’t actually stink up my car as everything remained sealed, but it was a huge waste of money. Not sure if I would have noticed it’s absence when putting everything away without the kids interrupting, but I screwed the pooch that time.
My former brother in law once bought a watermelon while on a road trip for his job. He didn’t have any luggage and when he returned home took his small bag into the house. About two weeks later his nose led him to the watermelon in the trunk. Did I mention it was August in the Midwest?
5 lb bag of potatoes in the cupboard next to the dishwasher. How long have they been in there? I 'unno. How long were the eyes that had poked through the bag and crawled up the side? A foot. How many families of shit-flies had bought condos in that cupboard? I don’t wanna think about it. The smell? I’ve smelled worse, if that’s any consolation (it isn’t). The pool of rot-juice? GAG!
Much the same as yours, but many years ago I started to smell a nasty smell in the kitchen, It got worse and worse smelling of death and many other things, but I couldn’t find it, no matter how hard I looked, and I looked everywhere. Finally I just figured it’s a dead animal in the siding, and tried to wait it out with air freshener.
Finally one day I saw a black ooze dripping onto the kitchen floor from a corner panel that had no handle and I had always assumed was on decorative. I needed a screw driver to pry it open and…
Flashback to some months prior. I had gone grocery shopping while really drunk. Really drunk, the kind where you open the fridge and cupboards the next day in total shock at what you had bought. I had a vague memory of buying a huge bag of potatoes, but couldn’t find them anywhere. I assumed I had left them in the basket or my friend;s car. But no, while drunk, I apparently put them in the corner cupboard I didn’t know existed while sober.
In the mean time they had sprouted, molded, rotted, fermented, and dissolved into the aforementioned black ooze that eventually leaked from the bag, and cruded up the cupboard door.
So then when the door was pried open from the crud, an aromatic waterfall of it started dumping on the floor. That sucked to clean up.
Mine was a lemon in the fridge. It had been in there so long that it had turned completely white and I could not see it against the white of the refer itself. It took about three days to find and I had to throw away all the butter and lots of other food.
One warm spring day last year, I was driving around and noticed an odd smell in the SUV.
Had I run over a skunk? Nope. Stepped in something? Nope. Anything weird in the back seat? Nope.
And then I checked the grocery bags.
Salmon, put in a bag on its own, with the unused bags put in that bag as well. I’d bought the salmon during the winter, and it had remained in its lonely bag through the cold winter months, only to ripen as the weather warmed.
And this is why I HATE when baggers at the store put one item in a bag, and pile your unused bags in that same bag. Don’t fucking do that.
Last week I was cleaning our car out getting in preparation for selling it and noticed a sour smell. I looked under all the seats and pulled our booth of the boys car-seats expecting to find a mouldy bit of food or old drink container - nothing.
Then I got to cleaning out the trunk and under a few empty shopping bags, right at the back was a 3 litre (just under a gallon) plastic bottle of milk that had been overlooked two weeks before. :eek:
We buy the majority of our groceries for a fortnight in one go. This usually includes 7 or 8, 3 litre (just under a US gallon) plastic bottles of milk (we have two small boys, they go through a fair bit of the stuff). The last time we had driven this car was for that shopping trip and it had been sitting in the sun the rest of the time.
The milk had fermented and the sides of the bottle had expanded out like a balloon. There was just enough pressure for some rotten milk to work it’s way out past the lid and soak into the carpet of the trunk.
When I was cleaning out my 2003 CR-V prior to selling it, I spotted something under the driver’s seat. It was a mummified tomato that had spent the winter under there, alternately freezing and thawing. Yummy.
By the way: any suggestions for getting the smell of that rotting mango out of the carpet? Tried spray-on carpet cleaner, then used the big power carpet cleaner. It still stinks. Seriously.
Try bicarb soda. Either sponge on a dilute solution or sprinkle a layer of powder straight on the area, press it in and then vacuum up after a few hours. You may need to repeat a couple of times.
My main worry about that carton of milk was that if bumped it too hard or dropped it I would have a rotten milk explosion on my hands with me at ground zero.
I too had an experience with ancient liquefying potatos. I’ve forgotten (or blanked!) the details, but I know it smelled about as bad as anything I’ve ever smelled.
My sister was in college & got sick; gravely sick, like come-home-go-into-the-hospital-&-withdrawl-from-school sick.
At some point, weeks later, we went to clean out her apartment; this included cleaning out the fridge. There was a ½-gallon waxed cardboard container of milk, which had been there long enough that in not only went bad but it went very bad, like cottage cheese bad, & had also managed to weaken the container.
When someone went to pick up the container, the sides came up, but the bottom stayed on the shelf. This caused the curdled milk to spill & release the nastiest vomitous odor ever smelled by humans thru the whole apartment. We gagged thru opening the windows before we left for a while to let the place air out a bit. ::shudder::
Growing up, my parents had a downstairs refrigerator. One day, whilst perusing the contents I found an unopened 1/2 gallon cardboard container of milk. An old one. Very old. Bulging at the sides old.
I carefully placed it in a plastic bag, walked across the street to the woods, and gently set it on the ground to let it go back to nature.
Potatoes that start growing in the cabinet freak me the hell out. Like they’re going to grab me when I reach in to dispose of them.
My father got Alzheimer’s. When we realized how bad off he was, we went to help clean up his house. The entire fridge was a giant science experiment of mold and mildew.
I’m not quite sure, but I think he may have created a new life form in there.
All I know is it took me about four hours of gagging and multiple trips to the trash cans outside to empty and clean this fridge.
After that I tackled the potatoes under the sink.
Yeah that was a fun day.
This is why if I ever start to get like that, my friends have my permission to kill me.
Thanks! Good to have a bottle around for future delights. The baking soda seems to be helping.
I remember an incident when I was in college back in the dark ages. We were all sitting around during the Thanksgiving break when we heard a loud BANG! We went out in the hallway and somebody said “It came from that room”, a room whose occupant had gone home for the holiday. Somebody got the RA to come up, and when he opened the door we all started gagging. Turns out, the guy had a real jones for chocolate milk and had filled a mason jar with the stuff at the cafeteria, stuck it up on a shelf behind some books and forgot about it. Why he thought it didn’t need refrigeration is anyone’s guess, but the gas buildup and explosion when it fermented made a hell of a stinky mess.
Our local stores charge 10 cents per plastic bag that you use. No biggy, I bought my own canvas grocery bags. Kinda like 'em.
So, I USED to put my bags on the conveyor first, so the guy bagging has bags to bag when the groceries show up.
One time, my bags ended up getting put with the bags of the person that was just before me. So they effectively gave my bags to another customer. I understand, shit happens. What really took the cake though, was after they gave my bags away, they charged me the 10 cents per plastic bag that I now needed. Grrrrrr.