How Finding a Dead Opossum Can Turn Into Comic Fodder for Your Blog

It was a beautiful temperate night in southwest Florida. 

We had the all sliders and windows wide open enjoying the cool dry air. 

A slight breeze was blowing across the living room where we sat.

Ahhhhh…..winter in Florida! What we pay our taxes for.

As I sat enjoying the evening zephyr gently wafting in……

“Do you smell that?” I asked Husband.

“What?” he questioned.

I should explain: I have what my doctor likes to call ‘nasal acuity’. If I were a DEA dog I’d put my bloodhound brethren to shame. I can detect the subtlest of odors at fifty paces. Husband’s olfactory senses, on the other hand, have died and gone to nose heaven.

He didn’t smell anything.

“It smells like……gas.” I said.

But there is no gas in this city. Only propane tanks for barbeques.

Husband dutifully goes and checks our propane tank.

It’s fine.

The next day dawns bright and sunny and once again we throw open all the doors and windows.

I still smell the aroma.

Occasionally.

On and off.

But then I notice our neighbor across the canal has painted his dock.

OH! I must have smelled the paint.

Mystery solved!

Later that evening Husband calls to me from the lanai, “Robin, come here!”

Now I know something must be up, he almost never calls me by my full name.

I rush out to the lanai and he points………

On the outside of the screen are flies.

Not just a handful, not just a few, but hundreds, no thousands of flies.

I’m talking Amityville Horror Movie, there has to be a dead body around here somewhere amount of flies!

They are on Wilson the lime tree, on the arborvitae tree around the corner and all over the pampas grasses.

All over the screens!

And the SMELL!

OMG the smell. What is it? And where is it coming from?

We look under the bushes, under and in the arborvitae. Husband goes and looks around the pampas grass.

Nothing, nada, zilch.

But we know it’s here somewhere, we can SMELL it. (Even Husband can smell it now!)

It was getting dark so we had to give up the hunt. We even had to close the sliders because the smell was getting so pungent.

The next morning Husband (aka Bwana) goes out to continue the search.

I interject here to say that we don’t always trim the pampas grasses as much as they tell you to. We figure it’s a great habitat for the geckos and garden snakes. 

It never occurred to me that it was also habitat for other bigger creatures! 

Silly me!

Husband finds a tunnel that runs under the tangled mass of pampas grass. 

As he reaches into the tunnel he feels something……soft. 

A dead opossum.

I handed Husband a pair of surgical gloves and went back inside. 

It was a dignified interment, only one in attendance.