See that tent covering the entire house? It all started last summer when we noticed that Crewy The Dog had bad breath. We bought him all-natural, teeth-cleaning, breath-freshening, chlorophyll-containing treats. They were so all-natural, in fact, that they were dark green.
Flash-forward a day or two. Maria and I were in the backyard giving the fence another coat of redwood stain. We both suddenly smelled poop. Fresh, strong dog poop. I thought I had picked up all of the piles, but apparently I had missed one. Much later, upon further investigation, we discovered that I had missed it because it was green.
Now, a 90-pound dog leaves quite a pile. Probably a percentage of his body weight that can be measured in integers. But what happened next seemed to defy the laws of physics: The pile seemed to continue to grow even though Crewy The Dog had finished building it some 24 hours earlier.
Perhaps it absorbed the dew that formed overnight. Perhaps it contained undigested yeast. Or perhaps it spontaneously acquired status as a new life form. In any case, this thing was BIG!
When I stepped in it my focus was on the paint sprayer. Maria’s focus was on not getting sprayed with the paint sprayer as she held up the plastic tarp that protected the plants.
Neither of us noticed that we smeared the pile with our shoes.
Pieces of the pile stuck to everything it touched: Our shoes. The tarp. The sprayer’s extension cord. The five-gallon bucket of stain. The bucket cover. The roller, brush, and stir stick. The large piece of cardboard that we used to protect the grass next to the fence.
When I moved to the next fence panel I whipped the extension cord to free it from the lowest branch of an arborvitae. This action launched a chunk of poop into the air. It apparently split into two poop-meteorites. One landed on my back. The other landed on the brim of my ball cap. I noticed neither.
Up to this point Crewy The Dog had been uninterested in what we were doing. The aroma of freshly smeared poop must have been too good to ignore, though, and he was soon stretching in the grass – on top of the ever-expanding pile.
Wearing work gloves, Maria tried to remove the poop from his fur, to no avail. All she succeeded in accomplishing was to transfer two sizable smears of poop to the gloves. Gloves that I later picked up and stuck in my back pocket.
There was nothing we could do about the smell. There was absolutely no wind, which was good for spraying paint; bad for removing aromas. So we plodded on, ignoring it as best we could.
The smell of dog poop lingers.
It can stay in the nostrils for hours after source and nose are separated. That was the case with Maria and me after we finished for the day and packed the tools and materials into the garage. Or so we thought.
In reality, we continued to smell the poop because it had not been separated from our noses. In fact, it had spread to the attached garage, the basement, the stairs, the carpet, the dining chairs, the sofa, the bedspread, the laundry basket and the washing machine lid.
Crewy The Dog was grateful that we had marked his territory for him. He seemed to walk with more confidence.
We humans, on the other hand, were not happy. No amount of scrubbing, steaming, vacuuming, brushing, wiping or spraying removed the poop or its aroma.
We called professionals. The Hazmat people wanted tens of thousands of dollars for poo-mediation.
Stanley Steemer wouldn’t touch it for any price.
Finally we found a pest removal company that said they’d tent the house and see if that would help.
It’s been over a year now, and the neighbors are quite upset that the house is covered by a tent. Still, the aroma lives on.