The Corpse in My Fridge

A corpse was in my refrigerator. At least that's the way it smelled.

For the last few days, when anyone opened the fridge door, a small whiff of something unpleasant would waft up my nose. Nothing horrible, just a slight smell that made me think, hmmm. I knew some leftover or something must have gotten pushed to the back but I wasn't terribly concerned about it. I figured I’d run across it in the next day or two and throw out the offending item. I never ran across it.

Yesterday, my darling Richy sent me a text that he had cleaned out the entire fridge looking for the smell. He cleaned out all the leftovers, checked all the produce, and threw away anything expired. I was so happy that he had done this distasteful chore for me, I was saved by my knight in shining armor. Richy had conquered the Fridge Beast and all was right with the world again.

Except that it wasn't all right in the world again. This morning, Richy and I woke up, figured out what planet we were on and what year it was as our hearts started to gradually beat in our chests. We cleaned the sleep crust from our eyes and began to raid the fridge for Diet Coke and breakfast food.  Oh Jaysus, Mary and Joseph! What was that smell? It made my eyes water! It was like someone had hidden a body in my refrigerator in the middle of summer during a power outage. I had had enough.

Then it dawned on me what i had seen last weekend when we bought groceries. Two bags of frozen vegetables had, for whatever reason, been relegated to the crisper drawer in the fridge. I avoid confrontation like the plague so when I saw them there, I just left them in lieu of moving the veggies back to the freezer and possibly having to explain why I did it. Turns out this was a bad idea.

I opened that drawer and picked up a bag of unfrozen lima beans. I reluctantly sniffed the bag and it didn't have a smell, so I thought maybe I was wrong about it being the frozen vegetables. This led me to be less cautious when smelling bag number two. I picked up the second bag and took a big strong smell, accidentally touching the bag to my nose.

I nearly died. My gag reflex went into overdrive and I nearly threw up. In fact I gagged so hard that I peed just a little. Not to mention I had touched this bag to my nose, so now the stench was actually cold and wet and up my nostrils. Now Im gagging and peeing on myself and having a true drama queen moment while Richy looked at me like I was crazy. I wasn't crazy. This particular veggie bag wasn't simply vegetables like the lima beans had been. This was one of those frozen vegetables with some sort of sauce in it. Apparently that sauce is made out of dead panda assholes and pickled possum feet and if you let it get warmer than freezing it will put off an odor that would kill a horse.

We were finally able to bag and seal both bags of mushy vegetables and get them to the outside garbage. They put up a good fight, but in the end we conquered the rogue produce and evicted them from the house.

They say you learn something new everyday. Well, this time, they were right. I learned two important lessons: 1. NEVER put frozen items in the fridge unless you are going to use them immediately, and 2. Sometimes confrontation is necessary especially if it involves improperly stored food.