That reminds me!
I need to get to ripping the sound-dampening off the door of the lab. It used to be the spare room, not big, not nearly big enough for my likes either. But before the bitch from perdition (CBC will know who I mean I am sure) roomed with me here, it and before I sold my amp, guitar and bass, it was the room dedicated to creating window-rattling noise.
But I want to put ceramic tiles up, on the walls, floor and door. Carpet does not belong anywhere strong oxidizers, or mercury, for example, could conceivably be spilled. Easier to spray down the entirety of a room that's a tiled box to cleanse it of biologicals also. One run in with having to have services called into the house to search for hazards (in this case a gas leak), due to biological..err..waste...sort of, was quite enough for me and I am sure the folks also.
In case anyone is wondering, no it was nothing I did, or bred (knowingly), but either I, or my old man when as a kid, accompanying me through the woods on one of my mycological foraging expeditions, it later transpired, must have brought the spores of the common stinkhorn, Phallus impudicus indoors. For several were growing out of the carpet, behind the fridge and freezer.
Ever been a place skunks aren't found, walking through the woods, only to get hit with a decaying carcass and overwhelmingly rancid fecal stench of truly vomit-worthy intensity? probably one of the phalloids. They release a pretty bloody potent mixture of sulfurous stinkers that can be detected by a human a literal mile off on a warm autumn day. And to flies, that says 'asshole' and 'dinner', so they collect the slimy green spore-mass and track it wherever they will. Up close and personal, a stinkhorn, singular, in a forest, is pretty virulent smelling to say the very least.
A cluster behind the warmth of the coolant pumps motor for the fridge and freezer in a house? folks called the emergency gas engineer out. Who tested and tested and tested without being able to find a leak. He could certainly SMELL it alright. Potently, and unavoidably. (heh, I used to use the immature unopened egg stages as a weapon of prank-scale and harm-capacity bioterrorism (nothing worse could happen but a turned stomach and a severely pissed off mood. Well, unless you count puke-potential.)
Ate some once. Never, ever, ever, ever again will I do that.
But he walked away emptyhanded and bemused. As were we, until we found the ahem...somewhat suggestive forms of these stinkhorns that had taken to growing out of the bare carpet in all their reeking glory.
Shit, I was just little then, I DIDN'T do it on purpose. I really, really didn't. If it were even me that introduced the spores, it will never be known. But it still cracks me and my old man up when that gets remembered.
So yup, the carpet needs to get ripped up and off and down, etc. and replaced with easily sterilizable tiles.
