funny smell...

PS- the owner of my house performed a 'heroic' duty pre-bbq. [he loves using that word, especially in relation to himself and usually referring to his tennis playing]

it all started 5 or 6 days ago...I noticed a really funny smell in the kitchen. now, since we do have chuks running around and sh*tting all over their side yard (you have to be careful when you enter their domain...and even out in the garden since we let them run around there daily [and by we I mean me or the owner's girlfriend])...and there's hay in there area...when a breeze is blowing in a particular direction and you have the louvered windows in the kitchen open...well...it can smell a bit like a farm.

sometimes I even wonder if I smell people sh*t in the backyard (the house is not connected to the city sewer, all of our sh*t gets filtered and held in a tank in the back garden, under the deck, and once a year a guy comes to vacuum it out, and the owner 'sprinkles' it on the plants all around our neighborhood)...it doesn't smell that bad...just a faint sulphur...really faint.

and we have a compost bin adjacent the kitchen sink...the garbage drawer has 4 bins in total - 2 for recycling, 1 for true waste and 1 for compost (plus the chuks eat kitchen scraps, so usually I like giving them the good scraps). occaisionally that drawer gets a slight funk...

but this smell was much stronger. and difficult to pin point. it wasn't the garbage drawer...it wasn't the compost...it wasn't coming from the sink drain. where the heck was it coming from!?!?

I commented on my observation to the owner. He said, ah...yes. The smell of death.

We've had rats I guess...I couldn't tell but he'd seen some hiding under box in the chuk's side yard...so he did a bunch of research and put poison down in a couple of select holes...and the poison was successful.

Thank G*d we had the bbq...it forced him to do something about the situation in a jiffy. By the time he took action, a second (observed by me, of course), was spotted in the hen-domain.

Dead rats smell foul.

The worst part is apparently that's not all of 'em...the other student heard a bunch outside his window last night.

And it has me just a teency bit uneasy as I have a window in the loft above my room that's cracked...so if they wanted to, they could come right in. I've been told they're afraid of us.

I will be shutting that window soon. Maybe tomorrow.

Now it's too late! Agh! Drinking wine late means you spend time doing things you probably shouldn't!

cheers,B