Alright, I need to post this before the hilarity is lessened.
I begin by posing this question, “If I were a dead thing where would I be?”
Apparently in the life cycle of buying a house (condo) there comes a brief hazing period for new homeowners. Jess and I can attest to this first hand.
We have had this …well, odd funk coming from our basement for a couple of months now. The smell comes and goes and is more noticeable at certain times than others. As our cat hides down there during thunderstorms we assumed that the smell was coming from …well, her. However, this weekend Jess and I went on a “Find that smell” adventure.
We searched Hi and Low in that basement. We re-organized, swept, swiffered, and washed the floor. We thought we were in the clear… that is until last night when we were doing laundry.
The smell was back, and like a Bruce Willis film, it came with a vengeance. That’s it. I had had enough and I put my nose to the grind-stone in hopes of winning the “finding that smell” game. I had noticed a faint smell when I went to fill the dryer earlier this month. I assumed that with our cat, Katie, and wet clothes, 1 plus 1 = 2. This made sense considering I described the smell to Jess as remotely like “wet dog” or “wet animal.”
This brings me back to my original question. “If I were a dead thing where would I be?”
The answer…as you probably have already guessed…The Dryer.
We stopped the laundry and pulled up the lint trap to find living “bugs” and a few small hard white things in with the dryer lint. “Are those… bones?” asked Jess.
After a slight freakout, I with tools and Jess with a gloves & a bucket-o-chlorine, we attacked the dryer. Yes, no need to call the coroner, at 10:30 last night Jess and I removed not 1 but 2 WAY dead (we think) chipmunks, their “bug” friends, and more fur than I care to discuss from our dryer.
Gross…freakin aye, yes.
Apparently they had crawled into the outside dryer exhaust vent, traveled down the air chute, and got stuck at the base of the dryer exhaust. I could not tell you how long they had been there…but it was pretty aweful. Jess and I spent 2 hours removing dead parts, chlorining, scrubbing, and washing the Bejesus out of our dryer and surrounding floor. In fact, it was a good thing that today was garbage day, because we were able to get everything out of our house, including a few dryer parts that won’t be missed.
Needless to say, I will be making a home depot run after work so we can finish our laundry….animal free.
