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The Smell Of Death (Not a Snake)

Nanci

Nanci

Alien Lover
Two weeks ago I fed the girl snakes. Yggdrasil didn't get fed, because she was blue. A couple days later, when I arrived home, my house had a weird smell. I immediately checked the babies- they are at the stage right before fuzzies, so a regurge wouldn't be unheard of. They were fine. And the smell was the most noticeable coming in the door, not in the bedroom. I checked the garbage. Nope. I smelled all the adult snakes, except the top row, through the holes in their bins. Nothing.

The next day- even worse. I took the garbage out. I got a chair and checked all the top row snakes. I opened Janine and Choco's cages while they were asleep. Nothing.

The next day- terrible!! I visually checked every single snake- all alive, nothing hiding in their bins.

By the weekend, it had died down, mostly. While I was feeding the boys, I had to stand on the chair to get to a few on the top row. Wow- I could smell decomp up there! I rechecked all the nearby bins. No dead snakes, or regurges. I pulled away all the feeding bins where it was centered- nothing. Maybe there was a dead squirrel or something in the roof???

So now it's Saturday night, last night. It's time to set out all the feeding bins for the girls again. And I found it- OMG!!!
 
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It's wet because I immediately threw the bin outside- I'd rather deal with it in daylight. But- I don't think there's any dealing with that. Yggdrasil just needs a whole new bin!!

So the way I feed is do a fast check to see if anyone is blue, _sometimes_! Other times, I just thaw less than the total, to allow for blue snakes. Then I set out all the feeding bins for the group, and fill them with mice, and take out snakes, clean the water bowls, put the snakes back. SOMEHOW I missed removing the mouse from blue Yggdrasil's bin. That's never happened to me before! Yuck!! But glad it was finally explained...
 
I guess there's a plus in the cold climates, no maggots most of the year !
It funny that as soon as I saw the pic that I could smell it all the way up here !! LOL
"The smell of death" that also reminds me of motorcycling in the warm months. Catching that whiff of something that died in the woods every so often out on our rides.
 
Sometimes we get in such a habit we don't see things that and shear exhaustion on my part have led to a few moments like these.
 
That's nasty. Lol. We had one die in the air condition went at work. It pumped the smell all through the office until we found it.
 
Maggots...I hate them!

I have a great maggot story. When I was in college, I was grocery shopping with a friend and he helped me unload everything. For some reason, he put the bag of potatoes in a cabinet above the fridge, out of my reach. I never noticed they were missing. Weeks later, I started to find flies in my apartment and it started to smell. I was searching for the source in the middle of the night, and decided to open that cabinet. Liquified potatoes poured everywhere, a cloud of flies surrounded me, and maggoty potato sludge was all over the floor, the top of the fridge, behind the fridge, etc. I can't describe the smell but it sent me running for the kitchen sink to :puke02:
It took forever to clean up, and when I went to throw the trash bag into the dumpster, my keys were in the same hand and went in with it. I had locked my apartment door, so had to climb into the dumpster at 2am to retrieve them. It has been about 10 years and I have never bought another bag of potatoes.
 
Potatoes are _almost_ the worst. The very worst is chicken bones. OMG. I didn't believe it till it happened to me!!

In Florida, we have fruit flies. They are difficult to get rid of. It would tick me off so much to open the (nice, touch-free) kitchen trash and have them come flying out. Well, my trash can has this little basket thing for an expensive charcoal filter, so I filled that with moth balls, problem solved!

Back a long time ago, my entire kitchen had a maggot attack, caused by dogs spilling water on the room-sized rug, over the carpeted kitchen floor. It was so bad I had to tear out both carpets and vacuum them up, and they kept hatching, and hatching, and hatching...I had to make barriers in the kitchen doorways with wasp spray. I'll never have carpet in a kitchen again, or dog water not on some sort of tray, or let a house fly live in the house for one second!
 
I've never had maggots but then again, there are no flies able to get in the snake room. It's sealed. I have had a rat go bad though.....I have natural cages with plants and such and I kept checking and checking....finally found it behind a pothos but I did have to keep going cage by cage...sniffing and sniffing....
 
Yes, fruit flies are awful, and are what infested my potatoes (this was back when I was in Athens, Georgia). In genetics, fruit flies are probably the most extensively studied organism, second only to e. coli. So a lot of people in my building work with them, and they are impossible to contain within a lab. Due to the types of waste that are poured down some of the lab sinks, the flies infested the drains and we had a serious epidemic throughout the 9 story building! It was like a Hitchcock film...but with flies.
 
My dog Rose is super good at pointing out the fact that my tease-feeder once again didn't eat overnight.
 
Stinks already? We have a sheltie that wants to eat all the frozen mice SO BAD. She begs whenever I am sorting them at feeding time.
 
DuxorW said:
Stinks already? We have a sheltie that wants to eat all the frozen mice SO BAD. She begs whenever I am sorting them at feeding time.
Click to expand...

Lol, one of my rat terriers likes to steal thawed pinks if she can reach them. Took me awhile to figure out what was going on, as she would only do it when my back was turned!

Nanci, that mouse incident must have been horrible!

Kathy
 
Two of my three dogs and probably my foster would eat the rats. My cats already eat raw whole prey (a small rat each meal)....my kitten will jump up in the fridge if you open the door to try to steal one from the bag in there if you aren't paying attention!
 
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