It's All in the Nose

This week's in-class exercise was writing about a smell or sound that evoked a memory. Specifically, this had to be a bad smell, something stinky, something gag-worthy. Yeah... something goooood.

In the ten minutes we were given, I wrote the following...

I dreaded coming home this week. I know what will be waiting for me when I get there. The dead squirrel smell.


It seems a squirrel, along with friends, chewed through the siding on our house right outside the master bath. The view from the ground was pretty remarkable - two feet wide, a half a foot tall - the hole was indeed gaping.


I don't know how many squirrels were in the posse that wrecked the siding, so I couldn't even guess the number that used the space under the tub as their own Motel 6. Seems like we did indeed leave the light on!


When we realized there was an infestation, my husband set traps - first for mice and then for rats. Both varieties walked away, leaving no victim behind. Aaron then resorted to poison, but we still didn't know if it worked.


Days later, I noted a new scent in the bathroom. Trash? I wondered. Does it need to go out? Aaron bagged it and took it to the curb. Yet, the stench remained.


The next day the odor was stronger. I knew where it was coming from, but still looked for other reasons. Unfortunately, the siding repairman also noticed the smell - a cross between something very rotten and something overly aged.


Aaron came home that same day to inform me he, too, knew it was the scent of a dead squirrel likely killed by the poison and continued to compare it to a less pungent version of a dead body in a crime scene house.

...lovely...