crab sandwich

On Monday, after a much-needed 10 day road trip through Namibia,¹ Kelli and I endured a long, if uneventful, journey back home. Two short flights and a long layover eventually led us back to Cabinda, and as we covered the last mile in a beat-up taxi, we were both fretting the same thing:

What glorious critters would be waiting for us when we opened the door?

A sink full of cockroaches? A counter covered in ants? Swarms of mosquitoes?

As I opened the front door, I wasn’t greeted by any critter, but was hit with something else entirely: a godawful smell. A certain unmistakable stench that could only mean one thing: something had died in here.

Kelli soon followed through the front door and I watched it slap her in the face. “AHH! That’s HORRIBLE.”

Yup. Something definitely died.

I commenced the foolproof walk-around-with-your-head-bent-every-which-way-smelling-stuff test. I looked up towards the balcony … For some reason, I had a horrible feeling it was coming from there. I had visions of one of the mutant fruit bats that fly around Cabinda at dusk—that maybe one of them got in somehow and decided to expire in a curtain or something.

Let’s leave the balcony until last.

So I headed towards the bedrooms. Stinky, but certainly not as offensive. As I walked back into the kitchen and made my way towards the fridge, a growing sense of dread flooded over me. I sheepishly opened the refrigerator door.

The light was off.

SLAM!

Oh shit.

I looked at Kelli who was standing next to me.

“It’s the fridge.”

She glanced at me, at the fridge, back at me. A second of recognition and her face turned ashen: “Ooohhh … Do you know what it IS?!?!” she burst out, frantically pointing at the freezer with one hand and covering her nose and mouth with the other.

Awe, fuck. The chicken.

There had been a whole raw chicken in there.

I watched from the other side of the fridge as she slowly opened the freezer door and nearly barfed on the spot.

OH. MY. GOD.

Kelli ran away retching and gagging. When it comes to describing odors, the English language simply doesn’t have a word strong enough for the smell we experienced.

Kelli’s face took on a look of horror. It wasn’t so much the odor as what it reminded her of. She said the smell was EXACTLY like her forensic pathology rotation in med school, where they referred to a rotting, bubbling, maggot-infested human corpse as a “decomp.” It was the rotation that I refused to hear anything about.

Oh man … Why is the fridge off? … The power is on everywhere else …

Then it slowly started coming back to me.

While we were getting ready for our early morning flight 11 days before, I was going through the apartment, turning off lights and such, when I saw a power strip behind the microwave. I flipped it off and then specifically thought, “Wait … is the fridge connected?” So I looked behind the fridge but saw a cord leading from the wall under it and assumed, “Hmpf. That must be the fridge.”

In my uncoffee’d state, it didn’t occur to me that the cord might go under the fridge and lead to the power cord … even though the outlet is OBVIOUSLY the only one on that wall. Without opening the fridge door to double-check, I let it slide.

This decomp was my clearly mess.

And it wasn’t just because there was a beyond-dead chicken in there. The worst part of it all was that there had been a year’s worth of freezer build-up and a bag of ice that had melted and mixed with the bloody, viscousy mess—an inch of putrid, vile, phlegmy liquid.

Ah man … I really messed up.

I finally opened the door to see what I was up against and had to do everything in my power not to toss my cookies. It’s the kind of smell that turns the whites of your eyeballs black.

First step: rubber gloves.

As Kelli tried to escape the stench, I ran out the door and scoured the convenience stores around our apartment. No gloves. There’s NO WAY I’m touching that shit with my bare hands. Luckily our landlord runs a car-washing business on the premises and when I asked him if they had any rubber gloves, he reached into the car he was standing next to, opened the glove box (fancy that) and handed me a pair.

I didn’t mention what I would use them for.

Back to the freezer. I would have preferred a hazmat suit, but opted for a shirtless, soccer shorts and sneaker ensemble with a dirty T-shirt tied around my face as a mask.² I triple-bagged some black garbage bags, and went in.

As I stood before the open door, I was thankful that I had an empty stomach. I quickly threw the disgustingly soft bag of chicken³ into the trash can and tied it up.

Must. Not. Puke.

“Overpowering” doesn’t do the smell justice. I went to my cave and found my power animal.

I put the bag outside and went in to battle the stink-water-filled plastic bags, Tupperware and ice trays.

JESUS, this sucks.

Those went into their own triple-bag jobby along with all the food detritus from the fridge. Worst over? Hardly. Now I had to figure out how to get rid of the 1-inch layer of funk juice.

After ruling out the soaking method,⁴ I began using a cut-off water bottle to bail out the liquid into another triple-bagged trash can. With what felt like tablespoon by tablespoon, I got most of the water out and then used an old sponge to soak up and squeeze out the rest.

This. FUCKING. SUCKS!

I threw the bulging bags into overflowing trash containers around the neighborhood and then came back for the cleanup.

After four days and plenty of bleach, soap and Mr. Muscle, the freezer still has a strong essence of death. We eventually pushed it out onto the front patio, where it is awaiting our next move. After an initial interweb search, I’ve read baking soda, vinegar, ground coffee and even pure vanilla can help with the odor.

Suggestions?

Needless to say, the next time we go on a prolonged vacation, I’m cleaning out the freezer before we leave.