Random Droppings

For the past 4 or five days, I've been noticing this...stench. In our bedroom, I first noticed a strong odor that made me tear apart the bottom of the closet, in case I'd overlooked a small bag of trash. Nothing. I changed all the garbage bins and even removed one from the room. No change. I switched to blaming the dog, and pulled the carpet for a good wash, accompanied by mopping the floor. An improvement, but only for a few hours. I kept asking Honey if she could smell it, which she did not. However, she did smell something in the sun room, where the older cats are housed. So I cleaned that minor hardly-noticeable smell of old litter and mopped the tarp underneath. No change in my stench.

The smell was worst in the doorway and on my side of the bed. I was driven to applying mentholated ointment under my nose just to get some sleep.

Then, Saturday night, she says to me "I think the quilt is getting funky".

Ah-HA! think I. She's finally noticing it!

By now it's changed from a rotten trash/vaguely fecal smell to a strong rotting sauerkraut smell, if sauerkraut could ever rot. She says "Is it something in the crawlspace?" which is under the room. I'd pondered that myself and then convinced myself it couldn't be that. She pointed out that the dog was now sniffing around the crawlspace doorway, which he never does. Good point.

They left for church and I attempted to read the Sunday paper in bed. I finally gave up, put on a hood, mask, gloves, nylon jacket, and headlight, plus I grabbed two good flashlights. Intrepidly, or perhaps trepiditiously, I shone a beam into the crawlspace. It was dark, dry, dusty and rocky. As I moved my head closer, I caught a whiff of that familiar odor. It was indeed somewhere In There.

I moved under. Just inside the doorway I poked my head up to look along the insulation that lined the underfloor. I could see black feathers all the way back to the far wall. OK, I think, the rat has found a dead crow and brought it here for its little feis. Fine.

I crawl out and text Honey. Her response? "Ewwww!"

We ran over to the hardware store after lunch and got new insulation, and then I re-donned my protective gear.

I dove in, grabbing handsfuls of insulation and ripping it out. Feathers and insulation came dustily down into my heavy-duty bag, and suddenly I was looking at the hind end of a rat.

A dead rotting rat. Under the duct, resting within the insulation.

BLEARRGGH!

Fortunately the tail was pointing towards me, so I pulled it out and dropped it into the bag. I pulled out miles and miles of contaminated insulation, with feathers and acorns and dust. Saw one bird skull and lots of acorns -- I'll bet thw squirrels came in first, followed by the rat and then the rat's little prize.

I don't know if the rat died because a neighbor left out poison, or because the bird was carrying something (a little voice popped up screaming WEST NILE VIRUS!! WEST NILE VIRUS!!, which is silly because it's the mosquitos that transmit it from bird to human. That didn't stop the little voice, which changed to CAPTAIN TRIPS!!) Oh, shut up, voice.

Bagged it all, dragged it out, taped it shut, dumped it in the farthest can for disposal on trash pickup day.

At the store I'd also bought some freshener thingie designed to be placed in the furnace vent, to make the whole house smell nice (cinnamon apple, to be exact). I placed that above the duct, just above the former location of the body. I know exactly where that duct is, from above; it's a warm spot much like a hypocaust that I use every morning.

Finally, I let it all air out -- I'm not putting new stuff up to seal in the stench -- so the rest of the job awaits another day.

I peeled everything off inside out and dumped it into the washing machine right quick (WNV!! Ah, shaddup!) and took a nice hot shower.

It smells like cinnamon apple now. With a faint hint of sauerkraut.