Well, fortunately I haven’t smelled anything dead, but I do remember the time I was a pre-teen and decided to see was ammonia smelled like. So I opened the bottle and inhaled. Deeply.
I still remember running to the bathoom to flood my nose with water, sure I had seared off all my nostril hairs. Funny thing was, the ammonia was kept under the kitchen sink. Why I didn’t flood my face at the kitchen sink I don’t know…maybe I just wanted to get as far away from the ammonia as possible.
I think I’m just lucky, the worst thing I’ve been forced to endure as far as odors go is spoiled milk, I can’t stand it, I always gag when in its presence.
You can may any organic compound with the right glass ware and reagents.
So we made cadaverine and putrescine…
For those of you who don’t know those are the two main organic compounds in rotting flesh.
So we made oh I don’t know some where around 20 mLs of each. And mixed them together with an emulsifier (basically stink napalm).
Well we didn’t spill anything or get it out of the hood so we had noc clue exactly how it smells.
Until we dropped it.
Picture 40mls of essense de corpse in a closed room.
Another yummy smell is blood waste. In an experiment I do we dump all of the red blood cells and plasma into bleach to decontaminate it before dumping it down the sink…
You haven’t ever smelled anything as bad as 40 mls of blood mixed with bleach for an hour.
When I worked as a veterinary volunteer, my third day on the job, I had to see an emergency “spaying” of a female rottweiler. Basically, she had been trying to give birth for 3 days (with no pup in sight) until the owner decided it was time to take her to the vet. Eeeh…the surgery was basically taking out all the most certainly dead by that time pups, and removing the uterus.
It was a big dog, I still remember how her uterus was filled (with the pup and the infection). It was big…before they cut it, vet showed me her teats…the dog had mastitis!
So, they take it out, drape all around the area, and proceed to cut…YUCK! Infected blood, strange brownish liquids, dead puppies…oh, and we were all in a closed room because no one wanted the odors to go someplace else or the potential clients seeing the surgery (the OR is directly down the hall from the reception room).
I stayed there thru the whole surgery, it was like a test, and I passed.
This is a lot less smelly than an exploding horse, but i stiil cant forget it . I found a thing of tupper ware in the back of the fridge ,not knowing what it was i opened it (right in front of my face) and it was filled with 2 year old rotting tuna sald and i literally fell backwards from the smell.
Ewww, blargh! Some of these sound like they smelled really offensive. Mine, on the other hand, sounds pretty innocuous: Wonder Bread.
But, but…first, feed it to a gull. Then, take said gull out of the foodchain (via shotgun, as part of a bird-strike control program at an airport). Give gull and 2000 of his friends to a bunch of biologists to see what food source is attracting them to the airport in the first place. Make sure the biologist who removes the stomach is…me.
:rolleyes:
I really cannot describe the smell, except that I have come across my share of dead animals, done my share of necropsies, counted birds on top of landfills, and caught mosquitoes at enough sewage treatment plants to last a lifetime. And I would do any of those over again and again to avoid one more whiff of gull-injested Wonder Bread. It is to barf.
Muffin, why are you unpacking dead guys from piano crates?
A friend invited me to help him open up his cabin one spring. He hadn’t been there since Thanksgiving (late November, for you ferriners). We carried our stuff in, and he turned on the electricity so the refrigerator would work. Then, he went to stash the beer in the fridge. He opened the fridge and found that someone had left something in there last November.
Y’know, I’m not sure, but I think there was some kind of slight “foosh”–as if a seal had been broken. He power barfed while I ran out the door. The dogs and I waited outside as he made several trips into the cabin to open the windows.
After the cabin had aired out for a while, we carried the fridge outside. There was no thought given to trying to clean it out.
Back in my law enforcement days, I encountered two of them.
The first was a routine “check the welfare” call. Middle of August, high temps and humidity. We were checking on a guy, in his mid 40’s that the family (which was out of state) couldn’t get ahold of for over a week or more.
The front door was unlocked, and after several knocks, we entered, and the smell hit us dead on. No AC on in the house, and it was a good 110 in the house not counting the humidity. Apparently the guy had a heart attack or something while sleeping, and the heat of the house had created a build up of gases from decomposition, and well, he kinda exploded. None of this was discovered until the medics came and moved the blanket aside, but that’s what accounted for the stronger than usual smell. (So they say.)
The other was a body that was drug out of the Meramec river from an auto accident or something downriver. A few days had passed and some fishermen discovered the body.
All was fine, until they pulled it from the river, and it got exposed to air. I don’t think there wasn’t ANYONE not retching their lunches at that.
I have tried to come up with the words to describe these smells, but words fail me to be able to dicriptively be able to do so. But I will say this, it smells NOTHING like a rotting animal, and it is something I hope never to have the chance to smell ever again.
I have to second that, Grimace. Having worked as an Emergency Med Tech for several years on the Gulf Coast, I’ve picked up a couple “floaters.” I’m not easily disturbed, but the visuals screwed me all up. The smell, though, actually gave me nightmares.
Gaah! No way I can possibly top these stories. shudder
Best I can do is–When I was working as a vet tech a few years ago, a woman brought in a cocker spaniel with a huge abcess on its neck. As I was still in training, I had the honors of assisting the vet in my very first abcess draining. We sedated the poor animal and put it on a grate over a big tub. I was standing across from her and was about to ask her why exactly the procedure had to be done over a tub, when my question was suddenly answered for me.
The abcess did not simply drain–it gushed-and I have never before or since smelled anything as foul as that. To make matters worse, it was thick and chunky.
Bleech. I’m making myself sick just writing it. To make a long story short, I gagged and nearly lost my lunch all over the place and barely made it to the bathroom in time.
And that was the worst thing I have ever smelled.
The second worst is puked up curdled milk. I learned the hard way that it’s not very wise to give warm milk to a feverish child, no matter how badly she wants it. Even worse to put said child back to bed after she’s gulped down the warm milk. :eek:
Elderly patient that had an indwelling cath that was supposed to have been removed, but he never got around to returning to his uro office to have it removed. Fast forward 3 months. Gangene throughout.
A floater that had been in a FL swamp for 5 days. In the summer. Nuff said.
That exploding horse story has got to be the best so far. Damn it, why can’t dead things smell like…I dunno flowers or something pleasant.
Back when I worked as a technical writer for an injection molding company, I was asked to do some mundane task at a workbench (they kept me busy there with many things) where small sample molds were laying about. After doing some work and getting white lithium grease/grime on my hands, I see a squirt bottle. Hmm, maybe its water or handwashing soap or something. Because the factory had all sorts of chemicals about, I decided it would be prudent to sniff the stuff before I squirted it on my hands. I gave it a gentle squeeze to shoot a puff of air towards my nose.
It wasn’t water! It was some nasty solvent, and I shot fumes right up my nose. Everything in my body went nuts. My eyes were tearing up, my nose started running like crazy, I was coughing…the worst part is I got such a whiff of the stuff I could TASTE it in the back of my throat. Fortunately I was okay.
Also bad smelling: In Biotechnology class, we went to the beach to collect some marine organic samples- basically a cylinder filled with seawater, seaweed, hermit crabs, starfish, etc. The teach froze them so we could do the experiment the following monday. Let me tell you, you have never smelled gag-awful funk until you have smelled dead shellfish in seawater thawing out.
Kal kindly related my horrific cooking find (decomposing chicken in frying pan) but did not want to go into the other two I’d mentioned… so I will…
Mid August or so in Southern Oregon with temperatures between 110 and 115 F, was out visiting a friend one day. There was a nice old lady who lived a few doors down. I hadn’t seen her in over a week so asked my friend if she had seen her… nope. I went around the apartment and when I neared the back window… the smell was almost solid… EMT’s and coppers said she had been dead for some time… gulp… Though, unlike Grimace the body had not exploded. Perhaps the slightlty opened windows prevented this…
Working as a Certified Nursing Assistant in a convalescent home we had various types of patients. One fella, a cantankerous old nut and diabetic to boot, would fight anyone who came in his room - literally. So it often took at least 2 people to do anything with him. Some of the workers were not very careful with him and often banged him against the bed railings getting him out of bed. Well, a few of these sores became infected, and being a diabetic who refused medication, etc… needless to say the wounds grew and festered. After a couple of weeks, we had to strap him down to stop him from clawing at his wounds, however gangrene set in… That is a most nasty smell. Yet when it came to bathing him… gulp it was a human stew… literally. Bits of flesh were falling off of him and cooking in the hot bathes we were instructed to give him. Let’s just say it was a LONG time before I ate meat again.
Also, growing up hunting, I’ve come across my share of dead critters in the woods… Left over bear munchies, you name it…
A (well-dressed) but obviously drunk lad, maybe 18 or 20, who got on the same train as me one morning. He spent half an hour mumbling to himself about how he couldn’t believe the court’s decision and how they were all out to get him. He smelled like a sour mix of stale cider and cheese.
The smell of a rotten egg being fried…Yep, we opened the egg on top of the hot frying pan, not checking if it was good or not…It was summer, there was no breeze…and there was a drought, therefore not enough water available to rinse that stuff!
Granted, other odors have been stronger, but this one gave me nightmares…and I’m always with apprehension when I have to break an egg.
I ** still ** want to know why there was a dead man inside a piano crate (did he come with the piano?) and why it was ** Muffin’s ** job to unpack him (did Muffin order him? and why?)
Ugh. I really should quit trying to eat breakfast while reading the SDMB.
The only thing nasty I can remember right now is my boss’s breath. It smells like he wakes up every morning to a nice meal of rotten skunk sushi, and then brushes his teeth with garlic toothpaste. It’s so bad that the phone in the manager’s office will smell for hours after he’s used it, and some days I can’t get within four feet of the guy.
