The Stinkening

There was a weird smell emanating from our pantry. So Michele asked me to go find out what it was and get rid of it. I walked over to the big white cabinet, but before I could open the doors, before even getting within a foot of the thing, my nose was assaulted by the most foul smell it had ever encountered. I opened the doors and to my horror, the stink was even worse, but I couldn't immediately find it's point of origin. It could have been coming from anywhere, so I'd have to...ugh...sniff around.

I started with the top shelf. Some time during the summer, the shelf had collapsed, cascading all manner of dried and canned goods all over the other shelves and onto the floor. We never did find the last of the four tiny L-shaped bits of plastic that hold the shelf in place, so ever since then, it's been teetering on three pegs. To keep the whole thing from tumbling down again, the heavier stuff was moved down the the lower shelves and the top shelf held mostly spaghetti and other dry noodles, maybe a couple of those seasoning packets for tacos, and nothing in the back left corner where the peg is missing. I checked to see if one of the packets had opened up and spilled out, but I couldn't find anything.

And so it went, moving down to the next shelf, and then the next, trying to locate an expired can of...something, or a broken bottle, leaking putrid stink juice all over. But again, I didn't find anything.

Finally, I reached the bottom shelf. There, we have some onions and potatoes. Deep in the back was a bag of little yellow potatoes. Little yellow potatoes leaking terrifying brown stuff. I'd just found ground zero.

Who knows how long they've been there, only that it was too long. It looked like the potatoes were secreting their own soy sauce. That bag was without a doubt the culprit, but because the onions had other potatoes had been trapped in there with the soy-sauce potatoes, they suffered from second-hand stink and had to go, too. Fortunately, the onions and potatoes were all in bags which in turn were sitting in wooden crates that oranges come in, so the smell had a buffer in the wood that prevented it from seeping into the white plywood cabinet. All I had to do was lift up the orange crate and toss those suckers in the trash.

But then the most awful thing happened. When I picked up the crate containing the smelly potato bag, the smallest, tiniest droplet of liquid stink dripped onto my bare forearm. The drop was so small, it couldn't sustain a flea, (assuming a flea would drink rancid potato juice) but a little goes a long way. I brought my arm up to my nose to assess the damage. Dear God, it was even worse than I'd imagined!! My options were few, reign as Prince of the Land of Stench, or that arm was going to have to come off.

In the end, I decided against amputation because the loss of an arm might throw me off balance, so I just scrubbed it with soap and water for a good half hour or so until only my own pleasant musk remained.

But heed my warning, ye who would touch little yellow potatoes leaking soy sauce: don't.