Something died outside. It made its presence known on the afternoon after the big heat. After a quick inventory of children, livestock and pets I began tracking the intensely unpleasant smell.
The smell of decomposition, or "decomp" for those in the real life C.S.I. business and for those of us in-the-know is unmistakable and sickening. I know this because I read a book --a very disturbing one that I would never recommend. I wish I hadn't read many parts of it cause now it's stuck inside my brain forever.
My worst fear is that it might be a heifer down in the pasture across the road from us. That was the direction that my olfactory sensor was taking me.
We do not own the pasture. It is owned by a family corporation, most members of which live in nearby towns. The land is rented out to one of our neighbors whose farm is about a mile away "as the crow flies" from ours. This neighbor recently hired Katherine to help milk their dairy herd 10 to 12 times a week. She is such a natural at this that she began milking the herd on her own after the second day.
The problem with dead cattle is that dead cattle are big. Really big. When big cattle die and go unnoticed, they stink. Really stink. It takes turkey vultures, coons, possum, coyote, and other various members of nature's, "Waste Material Removers" a great deal of time to consume a full-grown cow carcass (yes, I wrote heifer earlier and that was in fact the accurate term to use, but cow worked better in this sentence and no I am not going to run through the not-so-subtle differences between cows, heifers, steers, and bulls at this juncture). Consequently the smell of rotting flesh can invade the nostrils for days or weeks if the carcass is not properly dealt with by a rendering truck.
To have come through the horrible temperatures and humidity victoriously only to emerge from the house and be greeted by a wall of pure stink... well, it just ain't right. I groaned, my mind reviewing what I had endured the previous 48 hours while simultaneously imagining life for a week or two under a invisible cloud of serious stink.
The temperature outside at 3:00 am Friday morning, the day of the big heat, was 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The dew point was in the high 70s meaning the humidity level was sadistically high. By 9:00 am we had already reached 90. Our friends Tom and Emily called offering to take the kids along with their son, Henry, to a movie, dinner and shopping in Platteville. Every activity on the trip was focused on air conditioning and kid-friendliness. Our kids, of course, jumped at the chance.
Katherine was in Madison with a couple of friends. They were housesitting for one of the friend's grandparents in a home that I presumed was air-conditioned. Lisa worked that day at her new job as a staff Public Defender for the State of Wisconsin. Her new office, located in Lancaster, is air conditioned.
That left me. With the exception of our two dogs who played dead in the front room all day, I was completely alone. And hot. And sweaty. And feeling increasingly grumpy and helpless.
I discovered however that one advantage of being alone was that I could freely roam the house and grounds in only my boxer shorts. In retrospect, I suppose doing the full Monty was possible as well but the underwear-only approach was as risky as I was willing to be on that day.
There is something absolutely extraordinary about strolling through your grounds clad only in undies. It's liberating. Exhilarating. Primal. It's almost pre-fall in the Garden of Eden kind of stuff. It's red, white, and blue, oh thank God I live in the good 'ol U.S. of A. material. It's a William "BraveHeart" Wallace face-painted-every-muscle-contracted-reach-down-to-the-very-essence-of-your-being-and-scream-"FREEDOM!" kind of a moment.
Then I heard the unique sound that tires make when they leave pavement and touch gravel. Someone was coming up our driveway. It has been at least a decade since I have moved so quickly. My mind was racing, "can I make it around the house before they make it around the garage?" I did and in moments I was through the porch, through the kitchen and in the front room pulling up shorts and pulling on a T-shirt.
What a bizarre experience, going from such a state of contentment and exhilaration to one of complete shame and terror. As it turned out, it was a false alarm. The "tires touching gravel" sound that I heard was made by the postal lady as she delivered our mail to our mailbox. I had been, unknowingly, safe from view the entire time.
Our house was closed up for nearly 24 hours. In that time the temperature never dipped below 83 degrees and reached 90 degrees at the day's worst. While local newscasters said we hit a high of 99 degrees and a heat index reading of 114, our thermometer topped 100 in the afternoon.
I realize that to those living in the U.S.'s deep south, or the jungles of southeast Asia, or to those along the Amazon river basin that I am coming off as a major league whiner. I don't care. I have chosen NOT to live in those places because I hate the combination of heat and humidity. And because they have some really scary snakes.
Trying to fall asleep under these conditions is next to impossible for me. I slept for a combined 2 and 1/2 hours on the worst night. At 4:30 in the morning as I stood in front of a fan, leaning over a chair in my boxers, sweat rolling down my face and watching TV to try and get my mind off the heat, I almost gave up. I came within moments of going to the foot of the stairs and calling up to the rest of the family in utter defeat, "That's it! Come on down! We're heading to a motel!"
I did not give up the thought completely. That experience was early Friday morning and Friday was to be the dangerous scorcher. I could not see any way possible that I could make it through another night like that. While the weather forecasters promised some relief through Friday night/Saturday morning, I had already learned not to trust them.
When I woke up on Saturday morning, pleased to note that had i had both slept and that I was still alive. I began to rejoice. While struggles of any type are not something that I pursue, the sense of accomplishment found on the other side is remarkable. If only it could be canned, sold and served in six packs. As the morning wore on I began to notice that Barry Manilow's hit song, "Looks Like We Made It," was playing in my mind. Truly a sign that I had lost it.
Saturday rolled on and the temperatures remained about 10 degrees cooler than the previous day. Humidity had also dropped noticeably. As the evening approached I looked forward to opening the windows and letting all the stale, musty, moisture laden air out of the house and to bring in the cooler, drier outside air. I opened a south-facing window in the living room, turned on the fan which blew inward, and faced a sudden horror: something died outside.
The smell of decomposition, or "decomp" for those in the real life C.S.I. business and for those of us in-the-know is unmistakable and sickening. I know this because I read a book --a very disturbing one that I would never recommend. I wish I hadn't read many parts of it cause now it's stuck inside my brain forever.
My worst fear is that it might be a heifer down in the pasture across the road from us. That was the direction that my olfactory sensor was taking me.
We do not own the pasture. It is owned by a family corporation, most members of which live in nearby towns. The land is rented out to one of our neighbors whose farm is about a mile away "as the crow flies" from ours. This neighbor recently hired Katherine to help milk their dairy herd 10 to 12 times a week. She is such a natural at this that she began milking the herd on her own after the second day.
The problem with dead cattle is that dead cattle are big. Really big. When big cattle die and go unnoticed, they stink. Really stink. It takes turkey vultures, coons, possum, coyote, and other various members of nature's, "Waste Material Removers" a great deal of time to consume a full-grown cow carcass (yes, I wrote heifer earlier and that was in fact the accurate term to use, but cow worked better in this sentence and no I am not going to run through the not-so-subtle differences between cows, heifers, steers, and bulls at this juncture). Consequently the smell of rotting flesh can invade the nostrils for days or weeks if the carcass is not properly dealt with by a rendering truck.
To have come through the horrible temperatures and humidity victoriously only to emerge from the house and be greeted by a wall of pure stink... well, it just ain't right. I groaned, my mind reviewing what I had endured the previous 48 hours while simultaneously imagining life for a week or two under a invisible cloud of serious stink.
The temperature outside at 3:00 am Friday morning, the day of the big heat, was 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The dew point was in the high 70s meaning the humidity level was sadistically high. By 9:00 am we had already reached 90. Our friends Tom and Emily called offering to take the kids along with their son, Henry, to a movie, dinner and shopping in Platteville. Every activity on the trip was focused on air conditioning and kid-friendliness. Our kids, of course, jumped at the chance.
Katherine was in Madison with a couple of friends. They were housesitting for one of the friend's grandparents in a home that I presumed was air-conditioned. Lisa worked that day at her new job as a staff Public Defender for the State of Wisconsin. Her new office, located in Lancaster, is air conditioned.
That left me. With the exception of our two dogs who played dead in the front room all day, I was completely alone. And hot. And sweaty. And feeling increasingly grumpy and helpless.
I discovered however that one advantage of being alone was that I could freely roam the house and grounds in only my boxer shorts. In retrospect, I suppose doing the full Monty was possible as well but the underwear-only approach was as risky as I was willing to be on that day.
There is something absolutely extraordinary about strolling through your grounds clad only in undies. It's liberating. Exhilarating. Primal. It's almost pre-fall in the Garden of Eden kind of stuff. It's red, white, and blue, oh thank God I live in the good 'ol U.S. of A. material. It's a William "BraveHeart" Wallace face-painted-every-muscle-contracted-reach-down-to-the-very-essence-of-your-being-and-scream-"FREEDOM!" kind of a moment.
Then I heard the unique sound that tires make when they leave pavement and touch gravel. Someone was coming up our driveway. It has been at least a decade since I have moved so quickly. My mind was racing, "can I make it around the house before they make it around the garage?" I did and in moments I was through the porch, through the kitchen and in the front room pulling up shorts and pulling on a T-shirt.
What a bizarre experience, going from such a state of contentment and exhilaration to one of complete shame and terror. As it turned out, it was a false alarm. The "tires touching gravel" sound that I heard was made by the postal lady as she delivered our mail to our mailbox. I had been, unknowingly, safe from view the entire time.
Our house was closed up for nearly 24 hours. In that time the temperature never dipped below 83 degrees and reached 90 degrees at the day's worst. While local newscasters said we hit a high of 99 degrees and a heat index reading of 114, our thermometer topped 100 in the afternoon.
I realize that to those living in the U.S.'s deep south, or the jungles of southeast Asia, or to those along the Amazon river basin that I am coming off as a major league whiner. I don't care. I have chosen NOT to live in those places because I hate the combination of heat and humidity. And because they have some really scary snakes.
Trying to fall asleep under these conditions is next to impossible for me. I slept for a combined 2 and 1/2 hours on the worst night. At 4:30 in the morning as I stood in front of a fan, leaning over a chair in my boxers, sweat rolling down my face and watching TV to try and get my mind off the heat, I almost gave up. I came within moments of going to the foot of the stairs and calling up to the rest of the family in utter defeat, "That's it! Come on down! We're heading to a motel!"
I did not give up the thought completely. That experience was early Friday morning and Friday was to be the dangerous scorcher. I could not see any way possible that I could make it through another night like that. While the weather forecasters promised some relief through Friday night/Saturday morning, I had already learned not to trust them.
When I woke up on Saturday morning, pleased to note that had i had both slept and that I was still alive. I began to rejoice. While struggles of any type are not something that I pursue, the sense of accomplishment found on the other side is remarkable. If only it could be canned, sold and served in six packs. As the morning wore on I began to notice that Barry Manilow's hit song, "Looks Like We Made It," was playing in my mind. Truly a sign that I had lost it.
Saturday rolled on and the temperatures remained about 10 degrees cooler than the previous day. Humidity had also dropped noticeably. As the evening approached I looked forward to opening the windows and letting all the stale, musty, moisture laden air out of the house and to bring in the cooler, drier outside air. I opened a south-facing window in the living room, turned on the fan which blew inward, and faced a sudden horror: something died outside.
