I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
July 6, 2008
It began with a chicken.
Very, very (very, Hubs, okay?) occasionally, I sort of forget that certain high-ish-priced foods are sitting patiently in the bottom drawers of our refrigerator, waiting to be eaten. Such was the case with a nice, plump organic hen that was to have been roasted and eaten by my family one night a few weeks ago.
Only, I got busy. And instead of roasting a chicken, I found myself calling out for pizza. And throwing together a salad. And whipping up some nice Hamburger Helper. And in the meantime, that chicken got tired of waiting. And well, it expired.
A few days after its sell-by date, the chicken started stinking a little. And so, even though our trash wouldn’t be picked up for another six days, I took the chicken out to the garage when no one was looking, and I threw it into the very bottom of the trashcan.
I thought about that chicken every so often, because it’s pretty hot right now in our garage and I worried its stankification would give it away, alerting Hubs to the fact that YES, I LET SOMETHING ELSE IN THE FRIDGE EXPIRE. NOBODY’S PERFECT, OKAY? Luckily, though, the chicken was covered with garbage bags filled with rotting salmon skin and fetid banana peels and poopy diapers and its odoriferousness was masked. Since we would be out of town on trash pick-up day, Hubs wheeled our trashcan outside of the garage and left it there, assuming our next-door neighbor would see it while feeding our dog and wheel it out for us.
Heh. He didn’t.
We arrived home Saturday to find our trash can still sitting there, filled to the brim with two-week-old rotting food, and somewhere at the very bottom, an oozing, putrid horror of what was left of a chicken. Trash pick-up normally happens on Fridays, but since the following Friday was July 4th, the trashmen wouldn’t be coming until Saturday morning.
Despite our abject fear of invoking the wrath of our overzealous neighborhood association president, there was no freaking way we were putting that thing back in the garage. The next day, I took a bag of trash out to the can resolutely stationed in our driveway and was greeted by a swarm of enormous flies protectively circling its green plastic girth. Its lid was sort of bouncing up and down atop the bags overflowing inside of it, and from my vantage point eight feet away, those bags appeared to be bubbling and gurgling and… and… squirming. I swear, our trashcan had come alive with nastiness, and I believed that somewhere at the bottom, a secret stinky chicken was to blame! I squealed, heaved my bag in the trashcan’s general vicinity, and ran like hell.
I haven’t gone near our disgusting albatross since, but a few days ago, I was getting the kids out of the car and I smelled an unfortunately familiar odor wafting in the breeze. It was….
MAGGOTS.
MAGGOTS!!
People, nothing smells worse than a maggot. Except for a wet maggot, that is. I hate to admit that I even know such a thing, but, well, we’ve had maggot problems before. Ironically, in fact, we had maggot problems on THIS VERY SAME DAY TWO YEARS AGO. And that means it is….
My maggotversary.
To be continued…
This post originally appeared on Parents.com.
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