ya know....

(PSA: proceed with undue caution, you have been warned)

Ya know, today started off pretty normal. It was actually a pretty slow day at work. I had not been overly taxed or burdened and it was a reasonably cool day all things being equal. About lunch time, I sat down and enjoyed my second day of left over Chinese food. I had eaten most of the meat and vegetables already, but now I still had a good lunch size portion of rice. I finished my midday meal and proceeded to go back to my duties whilst waiting for the boss to return with an emergency job that was sure to make my life a little more interesting anyway. Well about 2:30 he returned with a job and a German man to watch me do the job. This is a bit odd but not something I haven't dealt with before. About 2 hours later, an hour past quiting time, I am done and on the way home.

Upon arriving home I walk in and begin to survey my castle. Its 5:30 and I need to feed the dogs and begin my part of cooking dinner, grilled chicken it is tonight. While prepping my chicken I notice an unusual amount of gnats in the area, I swoosh them away and decide to check the dishwasher. Yep, still has old cake plates in there from the party, I decide to load and run the dishwasher. I am figuring that this should cut down the gnat problem a bit. In the last few days I had also noticed an incredible increase in the amount of flies in the house. A friend from Church, Mrs. Dona, suggested that perhaps I needed to consider taking a shower. I think I will try out her idea this evening, but I don't think that is the entire problem.

When I say I noticed and increase in the fly population, I don't mean we have 5 or 6 flies instead of the usual one or two. I mean I hooked up the vacuum cleaner and sucked flies out of the windows. Not dead flies of the window sills either, live , mentally challenged flies buzzing around the window. I know I hosed up 30 or 40 the other day. Yes this seemed odd to me, but I have no logical culprit at the moment, other than maybe I need to take my annual shower a little sooner than planned.

I should also mention here that upon entering my castle through the garage door I noticed the stack of towels that live just outside the living quarters were a little more pungent than usual. There is usually a towel or two that stay outside because the two blind Bichon's who dwell in the castle are not always well potty trained. These towels soak up a couple of pee piles before the king takes them to the dungeon to be bleached and laundered. During these hot summer months you can catch a whiff of 2 day old dog urine in the garage. But today its a little ranker than that. I just do a huff at them and pass them by, quickly.

I have now started the dishwasher and prepped the chicken to be grilled when my lovely assistant Angie comes into the kitchen to lend her man a hand. It is her duty to fix the fixin's to go with the chickens. She observes the stash in the freezer and doesn't find what she is looking for so she goes out to deep freeze which is in the garage right next to the towels full of Fritz pee's. (oh, I think I hurt myself) She opens the lid to look for some corn, but the next phrase is priceless.

HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM.

What oh my lovely assistant could the matter be, pray tell me what your king might do to alleviate my oh so distressed damsel.

THE FREEZER IS OFF AND SOMETHING SMELLS VERY MUCH BAD OUT THERE. THE FOOD IS ALL RUINED, STANKS, AND ITS FULL OF MAGGOTS.

Maggots you say, I don't like maggots.

So I calmly tell my damsel that I will put my chicken on the grill and go to see what I might do to handle this mess. I, your faithful king, will handle this situation, without even the need of any mighty knights. I casually stroll out to the grill and put my chicken on at about 300 degrees to let it barb-E- Q nice and slow allowing me time to go and handle this little dilemma.

As I stroll out the door into the garage I notice that my lady is correct in her scented assumptions. It does have a bit of a foul odor out here. Its not just Fritz, its the freezer. I then open the lid and the aroma of decay becomes a bit stronger, but still manageable for the manly king that I am. I go and acquire a trash can and pull it up next to the offending odor emanater. I begin to remove the WARM items and put them in the trash. You may notice I mentioned that the items were warm, not cold, not cool, not tepid, WARM, just this side of hot actually. This freezer has been off a good while.

I pluck another item off the top.

and then another,

and then another.

I notice that with each item I remove, the fragrance seems to magically amplify. (or was it ampliFLY)

As the stank increases I notice that my lady mentioned maggots, but I don't see any. (yet)

About 3/4 done removing the items I still am of the mind that I just need to get the rotten food out, let the freezer air out and start over.

The extraction of the 10 pound pork roast changes my mind however. There is something unnatural about a 10 pound roast in your hands being warm and squishy. It wasn't squishy when in went in. I am now to the point where I must lean over into the freezer to pull the items off the bottom.

Now I discover a law of physics. When things defrost they leave behind water. In a trapped environment, the water doesn't evaporate, it just sits. To produce baby flys (IE maggots) one would need three things. Moisture, got it, warmth, got that too, and decaying biological matter, oh, got that as well. I got myself a maggot incubation chamber, about 20 cubic feet worth.

As I reach the bottom of the well, I find the water at the bottom.

First observation, its pink and white and its moving. It even has rhythm. The bottom is a maggot factory, 10 million baby flys all doing the stadium wave at me like they are at a New York Giants game. Maggots in large quantity put off a nice stank.

I stood all I can stands, I cant stands no more (Popeye reference for the younger readers)

I now am lambasted by an uncontrollable wave of nausea. I stuble out the garage to the edge of the building and heave a few hard ones. Now, (you were warned) as Elvis is leaving the building, as I am chundering up my lunch, as I am letting go my Eggo, I make the oh so tragic mistake of looking down. When one is yaking and one looks down one would see ones yak. What was it I had for lunch again, ah yes, rice.....

I will give you a minute to digest that thought for just a moment. (digest, get it, I kill myself)

The King is dead, long live the King......

Okay, move on, nothing to see here, move along ladies and gentlemen, move along.

In my indignant moment, I have chicken on the grill, maggots on my fingers, and previously eaten rice on my toes. Oh, I need to wash my hands, and then flip my chicken.

But first Elvis needs and encore, or two, or three.

So, I am standing in my driveway, puking on my flowerbed, while wearing shorts and no shirt, and a really foul reek coming from inside my garage. I wonder what the neighbors think of that

? Never mind, I don't want to know.

Well, I manage to finish the chicken and let Angie and Gracie eat. Oddly enough, I'm not hungry.

I go back to the garage and make yet another discovery. About a mile away, a fly caught the scent of what was amiss. He then heard me a chundering. He then stopped on a telephone pole and located the scene of this mishap. He then got out his cell phone and twittered all his friends, who twittered their friends, and so on, and so on, and so on. As I round the corner I hear a jet plane, no, maybe a Huey helicopter, no maybe a caravan of Harley's, oh no, just 10 million exuberant flies. It was like a scene from a bad B movie. You could HEAR them swarming.

When it was all said and done the freezer was bleached, cleaned with apple scented dish soap, berry scented arm and hammer and hosed out thoroughly and scrubbed to a nice shine.

The trash can however has a 150 pounds worth of fly bait inside, and it is working well.

Rumpke has been called, they might want to get to us quickly. Tonight is karaoke night in the trash can, tomorrow is shuffleboard. By the time trash day comes next week I figure the can will have walked off all on its own.