About noon I began to smell something very foul in the house. I looked nearly everywhere, but could not find the source. And the smell kept getting stronger. I finally found the source. I had searched the freezer for something several weeks ago and stacked some items on top while searching. A bag of creamed cauliflower in a rich cream sauce fell off the freezer on a side against the wall where I did not notice it. The bag was heat sealed and of very heavy plastic designed to be heated in boiling water. Gas had built up in the bag until it finally started to leak. I cleaned up the mess, sprayed the floor where the bag had been with Ozium, opened windows, turned on fans, etc to air the house the best I could. I then left for a while. Most of the smell was gone when I returned, but there was still a faint hint of it. Food and wine was the last thing on my mind after this. The smell might be duplicated by mixing a pot of rotten butter with a dead mouse, a rotten egg, and a small bit of rotten fish - worse than a long-dead cat that I once had to remove from under some shrubs in the yard.
No wine tonight, perhaps not tomorrow either
Mar 17, 2007
2 Replies
From the subject line, I was concerned for your health. Come to think of it, I may still be ;-) The closest comparable experience I have is when a possum died one summer in the crawlspace that extends under our back porch (next to the kitchen). I too was scouring the house for culprits before the flies finally gave it away.
My sympathies, Mark Lipton
Be strong of heart- grab a bottle and find a restaurant with reasonable corkage!
Seriously, my sympathy. I once had a freezer die at my office. Once we found out where smell was coming from, I emptied out probably 40 lbs of rotten lunch meat, and 3 turkeys. I just skipped dinner that night.
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