# There is evil in my backyard. It's in a cooler.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [April 16, 2003, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132 "2003-04-16T18:19:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/21 "2003-04-16T19:51:56Z")
Anything you put in that cooler from now on will taste like gorilla poo. Time to donate it to the church.
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### Author:  [@skreemr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skreemr)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/22 "2003-04-16T19:52:15Z")
baaaaad husband!
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### Author:  [@DeVena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeVena)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/23 "2003-04-16T19:53:15Z")
Open it?
You remember the autopsy scene from Silence of the Lambs?
Then you know what to do…
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### Author:  [@evilhomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/evilhomer)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/24 "2003-04-16T20:03:11Z")
If it were me, I’d nail the lid on and bury the cooler in a deep, deep hole. Preferrably in the neighbors yard.
But since it’s you, and not me, go ahead and open it. Just make sure you leave a link to this thread with someone you trust, so they can tell us what happened if things get out of hand.
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### Author:  [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/25 "2003-04-16T20:03:17Z")
There’s no way I would use it again, being all stinky and ooogey. But I would like to see pictures of the funk within. This could open up new careers in science and/or movie magic! And the husband should be grounded from the “real” coolers from now on. He should only get the crappy styrofoam ones that aren’t a loss if you grow evil in them.
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### Author:  [@Medea\_s\_Child](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Medea_s_Child)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/26 "2003-04-16T20:24:31Z")
Oh! Oh! I’ve been near this!
My dad worked at a summer camp for a few years, which left my mother an I to run the house. (You’ll see in a minute why this gets scary.) You see, Mom and I break things, but cannot fix them, so my father returns to new electrical appliances everytime he comes home.
Before he left he bough a new filter for the pool. Alas, the filter was too strong for the circuit in the freestanding garage, as it kept tripping the breakers. Not wanting to spend the summer resetting the breakers, my mother and I bought extension cords and ran the filter from the outlet in the kitchen. (Unless mom was using her coffee grinder, and then we turned it off.) It ran gleefully throughout the summer, with us occassionally replacing the cord from where it got worn because we shut it in the back door.
Now, my father came home in the fall and laughed at us and reset the breaker a final time. Then he turned green. “Hey, guys? You didn’t have power in the garage all summer?”
“No” we said, smiling in our innocence.
“What about the freezer?” and then we turned green.
We had a chest freezer that at the beginning of the summer held all sorts of frozen fruits, meats and veggies. Filled to the brim, actually. Probably a 4’x4’x3’ space. Since it was summer and the farmer’s market is close, my mom and I had been doing fresh stuff, and thus had ignored the freezer in the garage.
It was permanently filled with the scent of _Rotting Death_, so we sold it to a friend of our for his hunting lodge. (Beer and bambi don’t really soak up much of a rotting death scent. Well, not much more of one.)
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### Author:  [@Skydive101](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skydive101)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/27 "2003-04-16T20:32:03Z")
Oh my God! I’m bookmarking this thread just to find out the horrifying conclusion!
Who knows - maybe you’ll like the evil within. You and it can become good friends, and you can knit it some little pants. How many leg-holes does evil need anyhow?
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### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/28 "2003-04-16T20:35:42Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Velma \*
> **Gorgon Heap, I am honoured. You have given me courage. I vow that all shall know what is in the cooler!**
If whatever’s inside resmbles [David Warner](http://us.imdb.com/EGallery?source=ss&group=0131646&photo=Ss/0131646/fcstil_0476a.jpg&path=pgallery&path_key=Warner,%20David), **run!**
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### Author:  [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/29 "2003-04-16T20:42:12Z")
Fraidy cat.
Get Not Listenting Husband to open and clean the cooler. This time, stand over him until he does.
Then tell us what you find 😃
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### Author:  [@Velma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velma)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/30 "2003-04-16T21:00:06Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Skydive101 \*
> \*\*Who knows - maybe you’ll like the evil within. You and it can become good friends, and you can knit it some little pants. How many leg-holes does evil need anyhow? \*\*
That’s just ridiculous. I can’t knit.
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### Author:  [@Velma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velma)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/31 "2003-04-16T21:09:46Z")
Ok, here’s the plan. Not Listening Husband (NLH) has class tonight, and I’m not opening The Cooler That Grows Evil (TCTGE) without a witness. Depending on when NLH gets home, I might have him release it - I mean, open it - tonight. I’ll try to get pictures of it if it is able to be photographed.
If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, well, it’s been fun.
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### Author:  [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/32 "2003-04-16T21:15:10Z")
Velma, sweetie…wear a biohazard suit and one of those face windshields…just in case it spits or leaks or something.
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### Author:  [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/33 "2003-04-16T21:15:29Z")
The eldritch horror within the cooler shall awaken and destroy us all! Doom! DOOM!
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### Author:  [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/34 "2003-04-16T21:33:08Z")
Remember the film _Cat’s Eye_, a collection of Stephen King short stories? Don’t remember the title of the one short, but it had Hal Holbrook and Adrienned Barbeau. Holbrook was a professor. At the university he taught at some janitors uncovered a long lost box shoved under a stairway for over a hundred years. It was bound with massive chains and locks, and a warning about what was inside that was partially obscured I think. So what do the idiots do? They unbind the box and one guy reaches inside. 'Course he promptly gets pulled the rest of the way inside the box and eaten.
If I were you I wouldn’t open the cooler.
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/35 "2003-04-16T21:40:33Z")
**Velma** , I’m guessing from your location that you’re in Michigan. In other words, The Cooler That Grows Evil is on the same continent… as _myself_ :eek:.
Oh dear.
We all know that Evil is no respecter of national boundaries.
**GMRyujin** , it sounds a little too… gooshy… to be _eldritch_, exactly, doesn’t it? I always imagined ‘eldritch’ as being kind of tall and emaciated, or something, not semiliquid and crawling with anaerobic goodness… 🙂
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### Author:  [@Ca3799](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ca3799)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/36 "2003-04-16T21:44:12Z")
I’d let my husband get me a new Coleman Steel Belted Cooler. I always wanted one of those…
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### Author:  [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/37 "2003-04-16T21:44:33Z")
**Skydive101** , that was hilarious.
**Velma** , if we’ve learned anything from horror movies, it’s that bad things only happen in poorly lit places. Either open it at full noon, or go somewhere really bright. Otherwise, your husband is gonna lean in close to get a better look and before you know it, will have one of those face-suckers from Alien attached to his head.
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/38 "2003-04-16T21:47:55Z")
Y’know, if you leave the cooler unopened long enough, maybe Peter Coyote will show up and wrap your whole house in a plastic bag.
Then your cooler will rescue your family, and you’ll get to fly, and at the end everybody cries and hugs.
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### Author:  [@MysteryFellow63427](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MysteryFellow63427)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/39 "2003-04-16T21:52:21Z")
I second the bleach.
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### Author:  [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2003, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-is-evil-in-my-backyard-its-in-a-cooler/169132/40 "2003-04-16T22:42:37Z")
have you called the local epa? i think you have a superfund site.
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