Death Smell Revisited

I came to the conclusion long ago that I will never know as much stuff as my Dad.

Although I consume information like a sponge and read and write news all day long, my brain still can't match my Dad's. He has an engineer's brain and I have the lesser, discount journalist brain. There's no comparison --- he looks at the world a different way than I do. He understands exactly how every objects operates, the sceince of force and response and theories of hydraulics and pneumatics. I, on the other hand, can write a complete sentence. That's about the extent of my cranial abilities.

For months, I've been struggling with the occasional mystery death smell in my house. Random animals seem to be dying somewhere in secluded areas of my home. And then they have the audacity to smell really really bad after they die.

So Christmas Day, my immediately family comes over to death smell central to celebrate and open presents. After that was done, my Dad and I were outside the house talking about general stuff. He looks up and asks me if I have chimney caps on the house. I say, why yes, there's one on the front chimney. Then he asks about the other chimney. For those of you who are unfamiliar with old houses, most old houses that have a fireplace will have a second chimney that is not connected to a fireplace. That chimney was usually used as the exhaust vent for the kitchen stove. So I look at what once was the stove exhaust chimney on my house, and sure enough it doesn't appear to have a chimney cap. Chimney caps have a single purpose, preventing critters from getting into your chimney to either nest --- or in the case of my house, die. The stove exhaust chimney in my house is located right next to the staircase in my house. That's where the last death smell came from. And it's started smelling again. I'm sure a squirell or a roof rat fell 70 feet into the chimney, couldn't get out, and is now stinking up the place.

It's time to call the chimney cap installation man.

Thanks Dad.