Friday, June 02, 2006
Don't read this if you're eating
Adena’s post about her grandmother vacuuming up bees, then causing the thing to explode after sucking up all kinds of chemicals to kill them reminds me of a story from my childhood involving household chemicals and creepy crawlies.
My mom was going on one of her infrequent trips to Taiwan. These usually last about a month. My sister and I stayed home with our dad. Well about two weeks into our little vacation (we considered it a vacation even though we still had school because mom was a total taskmaster. Life was so much simpler and easier when she was not there.) we started to smell something in the kitchen. Something really stinky and nasty. We were perplexed as to what it might be, we kept the sink empty of dishes and the garbage was taken out regularly. What could that awful rotting smell be from?
Finally we looked at the stove. There was a large pressure cooker sitting there from when my mom made stew or beans or something. Carefully we lifted the lid and peeked inside. We were bathed in a whole new world of stink. The pot was mostly empty except for a thin layer of soup at the bottom… and maggots. Maggots everywhere. They were stuck on all sides of the pot, squirming. The entire inside of the pot was covered in squirming little white grubby things. It was the most disgusting thing we’d ever seen.
We immediately slammed the lid back into place and gripped our stomachs. My sister looked like she wanted to hurl. It was really gross. What were we supposed to do? My dad wasn’t home yet. No way in HELL am I scrubbing that thing, ew ew ew EW NO! Just the thought of even trying to scrub that squirmy pot gives me heebie jeebies. My skins is crawling as we speak.
We decided to drown the little fuckers. I put on the biggest oven mitt I could find and carefully picked up the pot and put it into the sink. Then, taking a deep breath of clean air and holding it, I removed the lid and turned on the tap as high as it could go. We filled it up with water and watched intently. They were still wiggling. Ew those things were sooo gross. At least the smell wasn’t so bad anymore. We waited five minutes and looked again. Still squirming. Damn those things were tough!
So we poured some dish soap into the pot and waited. No effect. Damn again. These things obviously needed something tougher in order to die, so we opened the cabinet under the sink and stared at the vast array of chemicals. Hey look, Ajax, let’s put some of that in. And this other soap too, with that other cleaner. And ooooh BLEACH! That would be perfect! Die motherfuckers die! After pouring unknown quantities of these things into the pot, we continued to stare intently into the roiling chemical brew. A few minutes later we started noticing an odd white vapor emanating from the pot o’ poisons. It smelled… bad. Not stinky, but like “I shouldn’t be breathing this” bad. We felt slightly woozy. “Maybe we shouldn’t have done that,” my sister said.
I put the lid back on the pot. I recalled something I’d seen on TV about mixing chemicals and producing caustic vapors. Is that what we just did? Oops. Okay, pouring it down the sink would be stupid, and I did NOT want to deal with those maggots in the sink either. I put the oven mitt back on and rushed the pot out to the back yard, with my sister opening the door for me. I dumped it in the farthest corner of the yard and ended up hosing everything down with the garden sprayer. I must’ve aimed the strong spray at the pot for at least five minutes to make sure not a single wiggly creature was left.
Since then I have been paranoid about mixing any household chemicals together. And I use bleach for laundry and that’s it.
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