Oy Vay! What a night.  My old chest freezer, which was on hand at the birth of Methushael, had given up the ghost.  What makes it so precious is that the ghost move out sometime last year.

I haven't had a reason to go into the freezer in a while, apparently.  I've had a bunch of bulk items stored in there and no reason to thaw out a five lbs block of meat just to feed my lonesome;  therefore I stayed out of it.  The freezer also doesn't have any type of external light to allow me to see if it is working properly or not.

I have smelt something before but thought it was a rodent that had gotten in one of the void spots that was inaccessible to myself and expired.  So, while doing some cleaning last night I decided to open up the freezer and clean the seal while at the same time refreshing my memory of what all was being contained there.  It took a moment or two to move all the other stuff off the top of the freezer so I could even open it, and when I could get the lid to crack that is when I realize that it wasn't a dead rodent that I had smelled before.

I need not describe the noisome mess I found lurking in the bottom but I am thankful that the commercial vacuum sealed bags that all the meat was contained in held, even with each one looking like a grotesque balloon.  I cleaned the seal and closed the lid to contain the smell, with an added weight to tighten the seal.

Now, it's not going to be until the weekend before any cool weather come our way and Saturday looks like a good candidate for me to remove the bio-hazards and then get that freezer out and to the scrap-yard (the cold should keep the volatile odorants much more dormant that if it was; say, 70 deg).  That will be no small feat, with the moving of the refrigerator, and taking down some shelves just so I can pull the freezer out.  It may be a while before I get another freezer and if I do it will be one of those small ones like they put in an apartment.  

Oh, Lawdy!  The adventures I have.