<hijack>
Care to share the name of the cleaner? Clorox does nothing, and RIT rust remover stuff is getting rather expensive.
Thanks!
</hijack>
Sure. Everyone wants me to point and hit a homerun over Fenway instead…
Boy, Google ads are little gems of modern entertainment, ain’t they?
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Indeed, as OpalCat and FairyChatMom will no doubt be unsurprised to learn, this house of evil is in fact located in Florida-- just north of Tampa in Pasco County, actually. AuntiePam also guessed correctly: this place is part of a relatively new housing development, outside municipal boundaries. So the problem seems to be well water. At any rate, I’m fairly certain that vaginal infection is not to blame.
This is a dimension of the Sunshine State that I had not previously encountered, despite having lived here for some years now. Based on my grade-school understanding of regional hydrology, I’d always been under the impression that the Florida aquifer was unusually pure and not at all stinky. The town of Zephyrhills just down the road has a fairly successful bottled spring water concession going; I’ve sampled their product and it’s remarkably unstinky. I’ve also been up to Silver Springs, and they too are pure and free of stink. Weeki Wachee Springs? Unstinky. The Everglades?.. Well, okay; they are somewhat stinky. But I guess I just assumed that was the accumulated biological legacy of untold generations of alligators. Anyway, I’ve smelled alligators, and even they aren’t as stinky as the water in this house.
On the other hand, I just remembered one time when I was hiking in Hillsborough County and ran across a small freshwater spring with a distinct odor of sulfur. At the time I attributed the odor to the several billion tiny frogs attempting to mate with each other in the water. But I guess that Florida water must come in two varieties, stinky and unstinky.
Somewhere among my own personal collection of bric-a-brac, I have a Vietnam-era U.S. Army gas mask. I’ve considered leaving it hanging on the kitchen spigot as a tactful hint.
Are you lurking in Akron?
I went to summer camp in Mass where the water was piped from somewhere sulfur-filled. Not too much of a problem, except at mealtimes, where everyone was required to drink a glass of water in order to insure hydration (this was before the bottled water craze. Wow, just think of that. I’ll be able to tell my kids, “One day, there weren’t shelves and shelves of the grocery store taken up with bottles of water. We drank it out of the faucet and we LIKED it gorddarnit.”). It was around then that we invented “chugging contests” to see who had sulfur water in his/her mouth for the shortest amount of time.
Good prep for college, actually.
Judging by the name, I guess their water must be coming from here:
Raise your hand if you paused for a moment to consider what curious chain of events resulted in Terrifel sniffing gators.
:eek:
Sure. It’s called “The Works,” comes in a spray bottle. It says to only leave on for 30 seconds, but I find with our rust stains that I have to leave it on considerably longer than that – it doesn’t seem to hurt the toilet any, fortunately. Plus it’s cheap, and has the added bonus of being available at virtually all the grocery stores and dollar stores, around here, anyway.
How else would you know if they’re ripe?
Interesting, I’ve wondered for about a year what the heck that tower was for. It looked like an Art Deco prison guard tower.
In Europe, bad-tasting H2O is supposed to be good for you…people PAY to drink stinky water!
In Russia, water consumes YOU!
Thank you!
I live in Florida; there’s really not a whole lot to do here. Yes, it is illegal to harass or feed alligators, but there’s no law against huffing them. The effect is not unlike smoking banana peels, except somewhat more likely to result in bite marks. It’s all about the rush, man.
Also, I have occasionally been asked to help out with a variety of animal-related educational programs. One such presentation is about the American alligator, Florida’s state mineral. Now I am the first to admit that I know ass-all about alligators, but fortunately I also have very little regard for my own personal safety; so my job is to hold the alligator while the educator fields questions. Presumably this is a visual aid for the benefit of those people who have never seen a picture of an alligator before. Frankly I think these sorts of presentations can lend themselves toward potentially mixed messages:
“-- and lastly, never attempt to approach an alligator in the wild. Okay, now raise your hand if you’d like to pet the one this guy is holding.”
By the way, did you know that alligators benefit the freshwater ecosystem by altering the terrain to promote runoff and by eating carrion? I learned that from listening to the presentation. So alligators actually can reduce the degree of stinkiness in their freshwater habitat, albeit only from ‘bloated rotting animal’ level of stinkiness to ‘diluted reptile feces’ level. Neither of which is anywhere near the level of stinkiness manifested by this house’s water, which is nearer to the “if a rotten egg had an anus, this is how it would smell” category of odor.
Wow I had no idea alligators were minerals!
Darn you! I had a nightmare about an alligator chasing me around last night. I wondered where that came from until I re-read your thread. Gah!!
ETA: What happened to the house owners? Are they back yet?
Not until Sunday, alas. I am practicing.
–“Welcome back! Smell any interesting water while you were gone?”
–“If I may, I’d like to take a few gallons from your sink with me to water my Stinking Corpse Flower.”
–“When you write out my check, I feel I must ask for a bit extra to cover the cost of replacing my olfactory nerves.”
–“The circle of salt and chalk in the bathroom? Oh yes, the exorcist said to leave it there for a few days just to be on the safe side.”