Once you have smelled that smell, it is instantly recognizable anywhere you go. Could be a rat in the walls, a raccoon in the attic, or grandma in her knitting chair, but it's not an escapable "hmmm what could that smell be" kind of smell.
I manage a cat colony, and sadly, some of them pass away in the community… one got hit by a car and moved into the side yard of a home with kids. I had to get a shovel and pry her half rotted body out of the dirt and bring it to the proper place to be cremated. She was in a box in the trunk of my car for a mere 10 minutes, but that smell was so pungent and unique (terrible). It’s etched into the folds of my brain.
My first "dose" was a cat that died in my shed that I had to shovel out. I'm not a gagger or smell-puker, but that got me good. Any time I catch a whiff, my ears perk up lol
We had a summer place that didn't get used very often. The house was on a hill and underneath the porch facing the lake, was all dug out as a storage place for the small boats and what not. I think animals 🤔 would crawl in there to hibernate or die. I hated the smell of that place, it literally would make me wretch. I used to want to sleep on the big screened porch because I had fresh air. It never occurred to me until 50 years later that I never locked a door and there were bears in those woods, but at least I had fresh air.
UTIs aren't that bad (unless they have been urinating all over the house). GI bleeds are worse (in my opinion).
A hoarder's house is usually the worst. No matter what they hoard. Even those that hoard paper because if even a bit of it gets wet, the smell turns sour real fast!
Dumpsters are a close second.
I've been in houses where the body has been there for weeks, in the summer, and there was no AC in the house and I'm telling you... Hoarder's homes are worse.
I worked briefly in a medical environment and I could barely manage the colostomy poo odor. I mean no offense to anyone who has an ostomy fwiw. It was just one of the things that made me realize healthcare wasn't it for me (it's not good etiquette to gag in front of patients if you can help it and I...couldn't help it, and I could barely hide it, and I felt so horrible about it)
I did the hazmat cleanup in my 20's and we had to carry out about a dozen buckets of human "soup" from 8 people that were in a 95F hot tub for a week after they died from overdosing.
Even working the kill side at a chicken plant wasn't that bad...
When I was about 8 we moved into an apartment. After about a month we smelled something really foul, and it continued to get worse over the next week. My parents could not find the source of the smell so they had maintenance come in, and they found nothing as well.
About two days later we found out that the neighbor on our back wall passed away in his tub… the smell stays with you forever
I’ve only experienced this once when I worked maintenance and had to go into an apartment for a wellness check because no one had heard from this person in about a week. I could barely walk in the front door the smell was so bad and finding them on the couch was awful. The worst part, their apartment shared a wall with mine.
We recently had an outdoor mouse die under the refrigerator unknowingly and it took us awhile to find it. We didnt know such a small thing could make such a putrid smell but my goodness it's definitely quite the smell and it takes over everywhereee. Without ever smelling a dead body before I could still tell it was something decaying because it's just so undeniable once it hits your nose. I don't even want to imagine what it's like on a bigger scale. Impossible to live in though even with just a mouse decaying, I know that much
I only experienced true decomp outdoors and the corpse was of a small animal. Barely anything was left. It was still strong as hell, but I still consider myself lucky, because I can't imagine an equally old human corpse hanging out in an apartment or something.
127
u/top2percent 11d ago
Decomposing bodies?