# Post your encounters with dead, stinky animals (TMI?)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [April 20, 2003, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933 "2003-04-20T22:56:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Trigonal\_Planar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trigonal_Planar)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2003, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/1 "2003-04-20T22:56:08Z")
The Cooler of Evil thread really got me thinking about this. There must be some…uhh…wonderful…stories out there involving various and sundry encounters with nasty stinky dead things.
I worked in a fish store for a while (aquarium fish, not food fish). Over several days this horrid smell began developping in the backroom where we kept various supplies. Now, keep in mind, we’re talking about a fish store here: weird stinky smells are pretty normal. But this was rancid. No way could a few dead feader guppies be causing this. So us employees got searching everywhere in the backroom. This was a pain since there were big heavy tanks and stands and whatnot back there. After several days, we discovered it: It was under the fridge. There wasn’t much left of that mouse besides the few pieces left floating in the liquid it had turned into…
Okay, your turn.
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### Author:  [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2003, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/2 "2003-04-20T23:02:49Z")
My story is not ‘wonderful’ but it is recent.
I was walking home and heard a ‘coo’. I looked around, and then down. There was a dead pigeon with no head. Not nearly dead, Dead.
With no head.
So, what 'coo’ed?
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### Author:  [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2003, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/3 "2003-04-20T23:11:01Z")
I had the rancid dead mouse under my hutch - ick.
And yesterday I made a discovery. My daughter had told me her car was making a funny noise and her boyfriend’s grandmother said it was her airconditioning about to fail (Note - this is the same grandmother who said our dog had a tumor. It was, in fact, a hematoma in her ear. :rolleyes: ) Anyway, when she started the car, I heard the noise, so I had her pop the hood.
There was a dead squirrel trapped by the fan. It was getting whacked rhythmically. I have no idea how it got in there or how long it had been there. But I do know that Grandma is no longer a reliable source of opinion.
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### Author:  [@Branwen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Branwen)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2003, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/4 "2003-04-20T23:11:29Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Lobsang \*
> \*\*So, what 'coo’ed? \*\*
It’s ghost, wanting you to put it’s body to rest.
My cat once left a dead mouse in my boot. Thank Og I saw it right before I put my foot in.
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### Author:  [@Crakmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crakmine)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2003, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/5 "2003-04-20T23:12:55Z")
Well, the ‘men’ of one side of my family get together and go hunting, if thats what you want to call it, once a year, at a farm where my father grew up, at one point when walking through tall grass we noticed a terrible smell, and suddenly one my uncles tripped and fell, what had he tripped over? A medium sized dog that looked almost mummified with all the terrible imagery you can muster up that I won’t be going into in detail _shudder_
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### Author:  [@GuyMontag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuyMontag)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2003, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/6 "2003-04-20T23:25:47Z")
Dead, but not stinky. At a vet hospital I worked at, we put our dead dogs/cats in our “morgue”, which was just a big freezer, until biohazard people could pick them up. We were taking the critters out for boxing one day, and another fella set a frozen dog on the edge of the counter–long story stort, his elbow hit it and it fell off the counter and landed on his toe. Smashed his toe to pieces, didn’t even dent the dog. Strangest workers comp claim ever: “toe smashed by 40 pound frozen dog”.
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### Author:  [@Asylum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asylum)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/7 "2003-04-21T05:01:26Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Branwen \*
> \*\*My cat once left a dead mouse in my boot. Thank Og I saw it right before I put my foot in. \*\*
My cat left a dead mouse underneath my kitchen table once. I was half asleep and halfway through a bowl of Captain Crunch before I wondered what the soft furry thing was that my bare feet were playing with. My cat almost died that day.
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### Author:  [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/8 "2003-04-21T05:06:50Z")
**Asylum** I had this image of your cat ‘dying laughing’ whilst watching your feet play with the mouse in my head, until I realized what you meant.
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### Author:  [@zoogirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoogirl)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/9 "2003-04-21T05:20:09Z")
Ours was a dead rat. Very dead. Under the bathtub and totally inaccesable.
We peed with the window wide open for days!
That was the stinkiest. The grossest was actually downstairs at our neighbours. I went down very early one morning to borrow something. It was dark when I stepped into their hall and onto something soft, wet and cold. I looked down and discovered a very dead garter snake. Well, MOST of a very dead garter snake! :EEK: I guess the other part was down their cat.
I was, of course, barefoot…
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### Author:  [@zoogirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoogirl)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/10 "2003-04-21T05:24:10Z")
Oh, man, I nearly forgot!
I also found out the hard way that if you own a non-descented skunk and it dies, you should dig a really deep hole.
Really REALLY deep!
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### Author:  [@peri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peri)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/11 "2003-04-21T05:51:43Z")
Central Missouri farm, high summer, solid week of 100º+ days. My friend’s dad shot at a racoon one night when he went to feed the dogs. He didn’t think he hit it, as it kept running. Several days later we were sent out to clean the “yard”, all 3 knee-high acres of it. I came across said racoon, stiff and stinky. No one else would touch it, so I grabbed a foreleg and pulled.
Outcome: One partially skinned racoon laying on the ground, one fistful of putrid fur.
This tale put a Chicago cop off his feed, as he ended his shift on the Meat Wagon. Nothing like a warm, fuzzy animal story to make them say, “Eww!”
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### Author:  [@DAVEW0071](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DAVEW0071)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/12 "2003-04-21T11:53:00Z")
Man, dealing with dead, stinky animals is part of my job description.
No mere mice or even rats can describe the worst experience I’ve had, though.
One of our clients had a horrific odor in his basement; so bad he couldn’t bear to go down there. He’d splashed some kiddie cologne he swiped from his daughter’s room around the area, but it hadn’t helped much.
Long story short, he expected _me_ to go down there and find what was stinking up the joint and remove it.
Turns out he had an elevated dirt crawlspace under a portion of the house, and the access opening in the foundation wall showed loose, crumbly dirt fairly steeply pitched. Apparently the animal had gotten into the crawlspace, slid down the crumbly dirt through the access opening, and couldn’t get back out.
Worse, it had tried to dig its way out at the base of the foundation wall and gotten its head stuck. I assume it starved to death after that.
Friends, this was a big animal. Not like a Shetland pony, true, but it wasn’t no mouse or mole. It was on the order of a groundhog or a badger. A twelve-to-fifteen pound critter. Dead. With its head stuck in a crack. Stinking.
I had to get a shovel and literally pry its head out of the crack and scoop it into a plastic bag. There were maggots on the underside of the body. Close work. Mouth-breathing work.
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### Author:  [@Washte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washte)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/13 "2003-04-21T12:21:05Z")
Critters found on the beach:
\*Birds - and parts thereof
\*A shark about 18-20" long
\*Tons of jelly fish
\*Many seals/sea lions - bloated, half eaten - always stinky (un-eaten ones always poked with a stick as a kid to see if they’d explode :))
\*2 Cows - well bloated and icky looking - poked but didn’t burst
most dead sea stuff stinks though
Critters found in the woods:
Elk, deer, coyotes, squirrels - various small critters
It’s very nasty to find large, half eaten critters in the woods. You never know if what killed them is still lurking…
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### Author:  [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/14 "2003-04-21T12:29:41Z")
Kitchen fan (inside vent on ceiling) started making horrendous noise. Building super couldn’t be arsed to fix it, so we disabled it by poking the broomstick through the vent. Shortly thereafter little bits of fuzz started falling out of vent. Bowl placed underneath it to keep fuzz off kitchen counter. Looked in bowl one day and there were pieces of bird feet and beak.
Poor li’l bird ☹
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/15 "2003-04-21T12:36:52Z")
The skunk hit and killed by a car right outside my apartment building on a very hot July Sunday morning.
Man, the people going to the church across the street were really upset.
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### Author:  [@Margo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Margo)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/16 "2003-04-21T12:41:09Z")
Oh where to begin??? This one wasn’t stinky…but…my sister and I were driving from Utah to Idaho one night singing “Take a Chance on Me” at the top of our lungs, minding our own business when out of no where a white cat darted out (we were going 70 mph on the freeway)…and THUMP I hit it…we both started screaming immediatley…she looks back and says “I don’t see it, I think we missed it”…followed by a loud whooshing sound and a sickening thud…the cat fell from the sky…we thought we should make sure it was really dead…BAD idea…poor kitty…
Margo (who has horrible flash backs whenever ABBA is playing)
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### Author:  [@Kn\_ckers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kn_ckers)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/17 "2003-04-21T12:43:46Z")
Speaking of skunks, there’s a dead one on my street. It’s been there about a month now, and it’s as pure, pristine and untouched as the day it met its sorry end. Is there some taboo in the animal world against eating a dead skunk? I mean, if this were a squirrel, or a bunny, within a week, it would have been picked clean by crows and whatever all eats roadkill. But this poor miserable skunk carcass has lain on the sidewalk undevoured for an awfully long time. I think I’m going to have to wait for bacteria to get rid of the damn thing.
It’ll be a while.
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### Author:  [@bayonet1976](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bayonet1976)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/18 "2003-04-21T13:43:42Z")
Jax beach, Easter Sunday. Lots of waves, lots of people, one very dead turtle in the sand. It was huge, the shell was probably about three feet across, and it stank!!! For the life of me I can not understand the people who were sitting within 10 feet of this thing, I mean it was ripe, ripe, ripe.
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### Author:  [@Mama\_Tiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Tiger)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/19 "2003-04-21T15:17:39Z")
My most recent encounter probably belongs on the recent “disgusting things my dog has done” thread. And it’s only a secondhand encounter.
We have a large upright freezer on our back porch. At the height of the Louisiana summer last year, we started smelling the MOST godawful smell I have EVER smelled. Turns out a frozen pork dinner had fallen out of the freezer when someone had taken something else out of it – at LEAST a week before – and our dear golden retriever was out there chowing down with great ,delight on this putrid, maggot-infested, stinking mass.
We got it away from him and threw it away, but he then promptly came in the house, upstairs, and barfed EVERYTHING he had just eaten up RIGHT in front of my office door.
The fragrance of this jellified mass did not diminish by having been cycled through the dog’s stomach. :eek:
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### Author:  [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2003, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-encounters-with-dead-stinky-animals-tmi/169933/20 "2003-04-21T15:55:10Z")
Being a Zoology major, pretty much 6 years of my young adult life was devoted to rooting around in the smelly remains of fascinating critters.
One of the more interesting was when a small group of my fellow Mammalogy classemates and I were asked to assist with the necropsies of 7 mountain lions that had been on ice since being killed by the County hunter via de-predation permits. (If you are a rancher who is having “problems” with a large predator, you can request that the County intervene.)
I was in a bit of an ethical quandry about participating, but I eventually decided to do it because the animals had already been killed, and I felt that I could at least try and ensure that it was not in vain.
Some of the specimens had been frozen for at least 7 years, with a few known thawings due to freezer malfunction. I just have to say that those older specimens were pretty much skin, bones and goo. The fresher specimens were carefully dismantled and their digestive track searched for signs of domestic livestock.
We never found any indication that these animals had been feeding on livestock. One stomach did contain a partially digested fawn.
The temporalis muscles on these cats were amazing. Imagine a muscle the size of your fist, devoted to one purpose…snapping/holding your jaws shut.
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