The smell. That’s the first thing that hits you as you walk through the door. It’s instantly recognizable. It’s a putrid smell to be sure, it seems to hang in the air, and yet somehow if you stick around your brain will eventually begin to ignore it. I think that’s one of the things that surprises me most, our ability to make things disappear into the background but as time passes between exposures your brain stops ignoring it and then one day you walk through the door and there it is again.
Without any reliable way to pinpoint the location of the deceased I’m left with two options.
- Cut holes in the wall at random and hope for the best
- Wait it out and let nature take its course
While option two is the non-destructive option it can lead to another problem. Flies. As part of the decomposition process the body becomes host to all sorts of organisms; one of these organisms is flies. I’ve seen them get into the house numbering in the hundreds before. It can seem a bit like an Alfred Hitchcock movie when it happens.
The fly problem creates an opportunity to test methods for disposing of the flies and I’ve tried several methods over the years. In my experience the most effective method is the trusty “bug zapper”, an ultraviolet light to attract the flies and and an electrified grid surrounding it to put a stop to the flies themselves. After that it’s a simple matter of cleaning up the remains.