Zombie Possum Smelly House

Have you ever smelled a really bad smell in section of your house and then had the smell get worse and worse every day until you realized that a dead animal has died under your house?

Well this was something that happened to my parents recently. But that is not the worst of the scenario. The worst part is what comes next.....zombie possum. Realizing there is a dead animal is only the second stage in this terrible process. The third and final stage is locating the HVT and extraction. Marcus decided that the nauseating smell of bodies returning to the Great Circle of Life was more than what should be considered acceptable for modern living and thought it was time to find the Thing and remove it. I happened to be at my parents house at the time and thought I'd help.

the trap door leading under our house is in my Mom's closet so we began the work. After hours of pain filled and disturbing work we had all of the shoes cleared out and were able to access the "basement". The basement of our parents house is somewhat post-modern and forward thinking. By that I mean that when it was built the architect new how important it was to build something large enough for animals to die in but small enough to make a human extremely uncomfortable in.

One had to drop into the hole in the closet and then sit with your body in the crawl space keeping your head and shoulders still in the closet. From there we had to scoot forward until we were laying on our backs. From there you roll onto your stomach and free to roam about under the house as long as you stayed flat. At first we saw nothing and hoped that maybe the smell was just something clogged in the sewage pipes, as this would have been preferable. But then,.....then my flash light stumbled upon it. I had to hold there as my light seemed to fight for control struggling to turn its gaze away from what it illuminated. A dead possum lay there and I suddenly felt my skin begin to crawl as if abandoning this ridiculous quest and the rest of my body, content to wait for me in the house while I finish this unholy labor.

I have seen dead things before but this was somehow different. I was trapped on my stomach and if the possum turned out to be a zombie I would not be able to escape. Maybe it was the animal's natural disposition to play dead that left me mistrusting its current state...or maybe it was the fact that it was a zombie possum. Eventually Marcus and I got close enough to lay out a tarp in front of it. Our next move was to shovel it onto the tarp then wrap it up and drag it out. This was accomplished but not without difficulty. The closer we got the more violent the creature's scent was and the more tense I grew, ready to hack it in the brain (the only real way to kill a zombie). As close as we were, it was difficult to work and simultaneously fight the urge to maintain the contents of our stomachs precisely where they were

We used a shovel to force the carcass onto the tarp and finally, amidst grunts ocassioned with screams of disgust. We disposed of the body and though we were never bitten nor attacked by the animal there is a large part of that still believes it was a zombie possum. Something about that possum just wasn't right.