A Foul Stench

The Scene is Set

So, basements. Basements are one of the best bonus spaces of any house. We have a fabulous basement, if you discount the fact that it floods occasionally. It's huge and unfinished, a blank canvas. Basements can serve so many purposes simultaneously. Ours is a hoarder space / laundry room / cat zone / tertiary play area / former bunny abode. Also, the tools live there. And the chest freezer. And furniture that I'm supposed to be refinishing. Also, my extensive collection of tissue paper, boxes, bows, and gift bags.

A New Smell

There is so much going on in the basement, that it is hard to keep track of, and it has started to take on a life of its own. So when it started to smell really foul a couple weeks ago, I had no idea what was causing the stench. I emptied Cat's litter box. I sprayed some rogue mold with bleach. I looked for dead mice (this is not a regular occurrence, but it's happened once before).

Given the fact that it floods and has been inhabited by domestic animals (and wild spiders) for years, the basement never smells like roses. Occasionally, it smells like anise. I have yet to figure out why. But this was an entirely new smell, and a really awful one at that. I finally decided it must be coming from the dehumidifier, which is cleaned with less frequency than the manual recommends. Since it's supposed to be cleaned with vinegar and I abhor the smell of vinegar, I asked the Husband to handle it at the weekend.

The Smell is Unmasked

The weekend came, and the husband cleaned the dehumidifier and left it in the sun to dry. The horrible stench was fading slightly, but it was still there. I don't normally touch the Husband's laundry, but I went to move it from the washer to the dryer, and I had to place some of it on the chest freezer, which is next to the washing machine (it's a power outlet issue; there are only two outlets, so anything that requires electricity is relegated to one of two locales in the basement). I glanced down and saw a slab of meat lying next to the freezer, hiding between the freezer and a towering stack of boxes.

The slab of meat was two pork chops from 2012 (one of my decent Housewife skills is writing dates on things, otherwise it would have been anyone's guess how old they were), which I had pulled out of the freezer to throw away... oh, a couple weeks ago (another Housewife skill: I don't serve 4-year-old meat to my family). Since I did not throw the meat onto the floor myself, I will paint a picture of what I believe happened:

It's a Tale with a Tail

I left the meat lying on the freezer by accident, instead of bringing it upstairs to the trash. Cat, who thinks he's being starved to death, saw the meat, recognized it as such, failing to read the date. Cat then attacked the meat, knocking it into submission on the ground, and bit into the bag. He tasted the meat, realized it was no good, and promptly commenced eating Easter grass to barf it up. Several barfs later, he went about his merry way, leaving behind a holey bag with 4-year-old meat to grace the basement with its fragrance.

The End.

The meat was removed from the basement and the smell vanished.

This is a good thing, because we are having a party Sunday and I don't need to be dealing with a smelly basement. I have a long list of things to do already.



The list. It's very detailed, as you can see.

 Writing a blog post is not one of the things to-do, so I'd better get back to the business of being

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore