i think there’s a body in the pantry
By heather | April 4, 2008
Last week, I noticed a bad smell emanating whenever I walk by.
So naturally, I instructed Brett to take out the trash. I didn’t remember tossing raw meat or anything in there but, eh, you never know.
But here’s the catch…the smell was still there.
So naturally, I instructed Brett to take out the recycling. Maybe the dregs from empty beer bottles and mayo jars have merged to create a new life form that smells like alternatively decaying fish or old meat with high notes of foot and cheese.
It still smells. I went into the waaaay back, and cleaned up all the paper bags and arranged the vacuum cleaner and the stored high chair all of which had previously been mingling in big junk heap. There was nothing hiding.
No dead mouse in the corner, or stray piece of fruit. (Which isn’t as far off as it sounds because while cleaning out the office last weekend, I found an apple that – no lie – I remembered packing in with my desk stuff when I left my old job. In October.)
I straightened out all the stuff on the shelves, thinking maybe there was a 5 lb bag of potatoes that had started to rot.
Cause you know, I lose giant bags of spuds behind tiny boxes of Wheat Thins on a regular basis.
Yesterday, after dinner I pulled up the little baby step stool and sat in the pantry with the food shelves in front of me, the recyling bin behind me and the garbage to my left. I arranged the Clorox wipes and sponges and carpet cleaner.
Alex joined me, thrilled to be allowed in the pantry filled with crappy foodstuffs and toxic chemicals. He pretended to scrub the floor, which he must have picked up at daycare because I’m certainly not setting that example.
I sniffed. I inhaled. My head whipped to the right. I inhaled again. The smell was behind me! But it wasn’t the recycling bin, because it was empty! Which leaves…the wall.
As we were moving into our house four years ago, the previous owner thought it was funny to tell me that while they were moving stuff out and the doors were open a gigantic black stink snake slithered into the house and took up residence on the top shelf in that very same pantry. She did what I would have done, which was freak and slam the door shut. (She didn’t go so far as to sandbag it, but maybe she just isn’t as ambitious as me.)
I don’t know what snakes smell like – any herpetologists out there? How about dead ones? What do those smell like?
I reeeaaallly need to take care of this problem, see, because I am pregnant and my snack food lives in there.
It just won’t do if every time I get the urge for a snack I have to either hold my breath and just grab something, or even worse lose my appetite altogether due to the godforsaken smell. I was too clueless to capitalize on snacking and lazing with the first pregnancy and really don’t want to waste this one.
Now as I write this, I realize it isn’t just the gulf that separates me from my Cheetos. It’s that I’m starting to get freaked that I can’t find the smell and that one awful day I will stumble on it, or it will stumble on me and cling to my foot screaming for me to put it out of it’s misery while I shriek hysterically.
My God, I’m about to have a breakdown. I need comfort food.
Ice cream! It will have to be ice cream.
Topics: freaky, home improvement | 5 Comments »
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April 4th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
That just downright sucks. But if it was the snake, wouldn’t the smell have started sooner? How long have you lived in the house?
I don’t want to be too alarmist, but I must tell you that I know of two families who had animals go to their final rest in between their walls or rafters, and what happens is that they get an infestation M-A-G-G-O-T-S. Like, throughout the entire house. Trust me, you do NOT want it to get that far. Call pest control or something!
rima’s last blog post..Getting Rid of the Junk in Your Trunk is Damn Hard if You Recycle
April 7th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Ewww, dead-thing smells are the worst. And yikes, maggots? Yeah, if it persists I might call a pest control person too. Creepy!
Crabby McSlacker’s last blog post..The Crab is Back… Kinda
April 8th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
you made Brett take out the trash and the recycling. put him on bad smell duty. as a pregnant woman, you can’t risk it.
this was very funny
Painted Maypole’s last blog post..Tale of a Slow Frog
April 9th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I HATE phantom smells. They are always the worst.
I really hope it is NOT a dead snake. That would gross me out.
Miss’s last blog post..SPF – Triangle
April 11th, 2008 at 11:03 am
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