I worked as a building engineer for a while and was privileged to experience numerous delightful effluvia. Interesting things like open sewers, refrigerators that had been left off for a month or two with food in them, various cleaning solutions which may or may not cause dain bramage, etc. But I would have to say the one that has my gag reflex working right now was the cats. The dead cats. The pile of decomposing, rotting, putrefying dead cats. On my first day of work, the guy I would be taking over from decided we should clean out the generator. You see, this place was a medical facility of sorts (clinical laboratory), and they had an emergency generator for power outages. The generator was outside, and in the winter it had a heater that kept it’s coolant warm so the generator would start in cold weather. Well stray cats would somehow find their way through the all of the guards and wiremesh and stuff and sleep next to the nice warm radiator. We had frequent power outages which caused the generator to start automatically. The startled cat(s) would try to jump out of the radiator, through the spinning fan blades for a one way trip to kitty heaven. I actually saw one make it out unharmed once! Anyway, on day one of my new job, I got to scoop out what was probably 5 cats in varying stages of decomposition. I didn’t actually count the bones sticking out of the pile of festering , maggot riddled cat fur, but 5 is a good guess. The lazy rotten worthless (insert derogatory adjective here) SOB that I was taking the job from had known about these cats for close to a month, but waited until someone new was hired to take care of it.:mad:
BTW, my first act as new chief engineer was to put more guards and screens on that generator. Somehow a few still got in there occasionally, but I damn sure never let them get that um, pungent again.
When I was about 16 or 17, I went to Lake Dallas to camp with some friends and took my mom’s new Monte Carlo to get there. Proudly wearing our stupidity on our shirtsleeves, we ate little and drank heavily.
I woke up the next morning spralled across the car’s bench seat to the most god awful smell. I opened my eyes only to see that I’d yacked all over the car. All over? It looked like I’d applied some kind of fermented pick-up bed liner in a wonderfully haphazard manner throughout the interior.
As the day began to warm up, I had to drive the puke buggy to the nearest car wash, open all the doors and just hose down the interior for half an hour. It was several months before my gastric perfume took a hike. Mom was so pleased.
…involved a container of mashed potatos leftover from Thanksgiving…and found in the back of the fridge some six months later.
…involved our cat’s gastrointestinal system.
Nothing, but nothing, smells as vile as cat diarrhea.
Believe me, I know. My wife simultaneously yells at me and laughs at me (quite a trick, indeed) whenever I pull something out of the fridge and inhale deeply to determine whether or not it’s still good. I’ve gotten a snoot full of some quite repugnant substances over the years, yet I continue to do it.
And when I say even a tiny hint of our cat’s diarrhea sent me heaving into the bathroom, I know whereof I speak.
I lost a piece in my car in summer once…
On orange juice gone bad: A few weeks ago, one of the editors at the newspaper where I work found a gallon jug of OJ in the back of the breakroom fridge. It was less than a quarter full, and nobody could remember how long it had been there. He was going to pour it down the drain, but shook it a bit first, so he could get the pulp to pour out with it.
It exploded, blowing the cap off the bottle and spraying him with fermented orange juice. He had to call his wife and have her bring him a change of clothes.