The Smell of Death

If you saw your neighbor out well after dark digging a giant hole at the far end of his property what would you think?

That's what we wondered as we dug a six-foot hole out back in late February.  By "we" I mean Mike.  I was supervising.

For a week or so, Mike kept saying the house smelled funny when he got home from work.  I tried not to take it personally :)  It wasn't until Mike was getting a book for the kids off of the shelf that's next to our deep freeze, that he put two and two together.  He opened the freezer to check his suspicions.  From back in our bedroom, I heard him gagging.  He was doubled over still coughing and trying to regain his composure when I came out to the living room to see what was going on.

Somehow our deep freeze got unplugged accidentally without our knowing.

Oh man!  It was BAD!

Mike's parents have an enormous deep freeze (as long as a coffin).  It is full of all sorts of garden produce and other food.  Since theirs was so packed, when turkey and ham went on sale around the holidays, we plugged our freezer in.  We bought a several of turkeys at Thanksgiving to use throughout the year.  We had plenty of space, so Mike's mom stored four turkeys and several hams in our freezer. We also had some pumpkin puree and a partial gallon of milk (that we stuck in there before going out of town in January).

Yes, we had a freezer full of meat that has been unplugged for so long that it is not even a little bit cold.  I wish you could see the smell.  If this were a cartoon, there would be billowing green clouds everywhere!

We used these plastic baskets to take the dripping, putrid foodstuffs outside.  We put the plastic baskets in the wheelbarrow and our hero, Mike, pushed it out to the hole in back where we dumped them into the giant crater.  The packaging around the turkeys was so bloated that when we tossed the turkeys in, their bags would explode.  Same thing with the milk. Just exploded with a bang.

Deeeeesgusting!

No, "disgusting" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.  Rotting meat has got to be the worst smell on the planet.  I had my winter coat zipped up to cover my mouth and nose.  I used my amazing mental power to keep from complicating things by throwing up all over.  It was, hands down, the worst smell of my life.

If I haven't grossed you out enough already, then I will tell you that after the meat was out, there was a lovely pink liquid remaining.  I'll just let you guess what that was.  Mike told me about it.  I couldn't bear to look, so I had him take a picture so I could look at it later without the awful stench.

Here we have around 200 pounds of rotting meat laid to rest in a special spot on the property.

Time to cover it up!  Hooray.  We covered it up with a nice mound of dirt that will settle over time.

I wish I could say that our job was done here and we showered and went to bed, but that freezer full of pink juices was not going to take care of itself.  So the hero and I carried the freezer outside, far from the house, and dumped it.  We scrubbed it out with straight bleach (once again, by "we" I mean Mike).  We left the freezer hoping the sun would help.  We put large bowls of baking soda in there for weeks, then plugged it in hoping to freeze out the smell that remained.  

The freezer still has a distinct smell, but it is subtle enough that we have started using it again.  Now as part of our night time routine (lock the door, turn off the lights, etc) we have added: check the freezer!