“There’s a dead animal in the house.” The thought hit Lindsey right after the smell did.
She’d struggled into the house, grocery bags draped 5 deep on each arm, purse slipping off her shoulder and one shoe threatening to slip off her foot. With the talent many women possess, she had managed to get the correct key in the lock and shove the stubborn door open without breaking a single egg. That’s when the smell hit her full in the face.
It was an odor the family had been gradually noticing. At first, Lindsey made the rounds through the house, making sure no food was rotting in anyone’s bedroom and emptying every garbage can. Then, her oldest thought it was a backed-up sewer, since the smell seemed stronger in the little hallway that led to the laundry room and half bath. She’d asked her ex-husband to take a look at it, and he’d reluctantly come over, but he hadn’t found anything wrong with the sewer pipes. He’d also suggested, rather grumpily, that she call a professional next time she needed help with the house. That suited her just fine.
Her teenage daughter had brought a friend home, who had no reservations about expressing herself. “Ew, your house stinks like garbage!” Her humiliated daughter ended up going to her friend’s house to study.
Lindsey was frustrated. The mystery stench was getting stronger and stronger as each day passed, and nearly 2 weeks had gone by. They’d done spring-cleaning early in an effort to locate the odor’s source. They’d invested in a simple black-light to see if they could find anything on the carpet or tile. It was incredibly frustrating. Lindsey considered herself an excellent homemaker, and was proud of keeping her home tidy and clean. No matter what she did, though, the smell got more and more overpowering.
Nothing makes you more aware of a stench in the house than entering it after being away for the morning on errands. Lindsey had been more than happy to have another excuse to leave the house, just to get away from the smell, but dreaded returning home. When the odor hit her as she struggled inside, the thought had finally come to Lindsey that it must be a dead animal in the home. What if a wild animal crawled inside the wall to die? A dead animal would explain that awful stench that just wouldn’t go away.
The thought of crawling around the insides of her house and possibly coming face to face with a rotting raccoon, dead squirrels, or whatever wild animal had died in her house turned her stomach. No, she decided to take her ex’s advice and call a professional to remove the dead animal.