I have a squirrel one.
WARNING: NOT FOR THE FAINT OF STOMACH. INVOLVES MULTIPLE BODY FLUIDS FROM MULTIPLE SPECIES.
My former partner (I'm in law enforcement) and I are both forensic specialists, so pretty used to our share of ook, goo and yuck. Our DHs both relied on us to handle any "nasty bits," despite her DH being an MD and mine a former sailor.
JM, my partner, was using a room in their basement as a study and began smelling something, ah, distinctive to people in our line of work. I agreed to come over that weekend and help her track it down, as we were fairly sure something had died in the basement - we were just hoping that it wasn't actually inside a wall.
It wasn't - it was in the chimney. THEY were in the chimney. A nest of squirrels, all very dead, and for long enough to reach the, umm, mushy stage. JM, who is taller, could not get her arm far enough up into the chimney to collect the corpses. After a little experimentation, I discovered that I (who am quite small) could get *inside* the fireplace and sort of half-stand, half-crouch and reach up far enough to grab them. So I started retrieving bodies and dropping them in the bucket JM had at my feet. Until...
Something, I think either a mouse or a bat, startled me. I reflexively flinched and sort of straightened, banging my head HARD on the chimney opening and simultaneously flailing my arms around. As I did so, my hand apparently caught the last of the squirrels and knocked them off the ledge they'd died on, whereupon dead squirrels, bits of dead squirrels and assorted effluvia landed squarely on my head. I backed out hastily, and of course tripped over the bucket, spilling its contents all over the floor. JM came running to help, slipped in the mess, and landed flat on her back in the middle of the ... squirrel puddle. Our DHs came downstairs to find us liberally slathered in squirrel juices, me swearing a blue streak and JM making a sort of wheeze/gasp/laugh noise. Both DHs instantly got sick, my DH making it only as far as the stairs before losing lunch, and her DH making it at least outside the basement sliding door before heaving.
We all four went outside, stripped naked, and washed ourselves down with the garden hose and a bar of soap, despite it being November and about 38 degrees (I don't think - I hope - any neighbors were watching). Then JM and I suited up like in our crime scene gear - disposable jumpsuit w/hood, shower cap, rubber boots, gloves, goggles, face mask, armed ourselves with a shopvac, bleach, Simple Green, Nature's Miracle, rubbing alcohol, betadine, ammonia, vinegar and anything else that sounded good, taped our gloves to our sleeves and our cuffs to our boots, and cleaned everything up. We put everything, including the ShopVac, our clothes, and our crime scene suits, in trash bags, put the bags in more trash bags, and set them inside sealed trash cans for DHs to haul to the dump.
Meantime, the guys went and took showers. Wimps! We demanded they take us out to dinner in exchange for their not having to deal with the "nasty bits." They did, after they went to the dump and then came home and took additional showers.
Vorbau
PS I forgot - at one point, while I was scooping squirrel bits out of the chimney, I asked JM if she had some kind of tongs or something that I could use to reach the more distant casualties. She hollered up the stairs to her DH to bring some down - she meant the ones they used on the BBQ, reasoning that those could go in the dishwasher or just be thrown out. Instead, her DH apparently couldn't find the ones she meant, and brought down a pair of antique sterling silver salad tongs. She looked at me, I looked at her, and we both burst out laughing - then she handed me the tongs and I used them to grab the bits I couldn't reach. We washed them down in bleach and rubbing alcohol before bagging them up and taking them to work to run them through the autoclave. Later that month, we had a joint Thanksgiving dinner at her house, and she asked me to go get the "squirrel tongs." I'm sure her extended family STILL wonders what had us laughing like loons.
