Saturday morning, went for a dog walk and when I returned, I detected the faint odor of death in the house. I noticed it again on Sunday and then again, even stronger, this morning. It was in every room. Usually when an animal dies in the attic, the odor is isolated. What could be hitting every room?
The air conditioning system. Sure enough, when I opened the front garage to my house where the unit is kept, I could smell a dead rat before the door was unlocked. There was a dead rat under the stand the A.C. unit rests on. Flies were around. It gave me the willies (no offense to my poker buddy from South of the border-what the hell, he doesn't read this.)
I grabbed an empty beer box from the main garage and nudged the rat into it. I knew the perfect place to discard the body: in the field behind the hobo camp.
I took the box and the doggie pooper scooper I retrieved from the shed (to scoot the rat into the beer box) with me and crossed the street. I approached the fence line (keep in mind I am not dumping the rat in the hobo camp, but in the lot right behind it) and noticed that two girls working at Bird's Barbershop were outside on a smoke break and had an unencumbered view of my activities.
Thinking fast, I quickly turned the beer box upside down, dumping the rat to the ground on the other side of the fence and then began picking up a beer bottle and a discarded radiator hose I found on the curb adjacent to the dump spot with the pooper scooper.
Instead of a rat dumping polluter, I was an eco-warrier picking up debris on the roadside and I doubt those barbershop birds saw through an otherwise transpicuous charade.
The odor is now gone and I can relax for the rest of the day. That's how I am spending my day off.
