The rainforest is a dynamic living environment with a multitude of life forms, plant and animal, trying to make a living. They have been at it for millions of years and I have recently intruded into their space to live here. Blessed with abundant sun energy and water, a rainforest is life in the fast lane. I have to accept and deal with the consequences.
I went up to the top cottage this morning to clean the windows and upon opening the door was greeted by the most awful stench. Hmmm… expecting guests in a few hours, this will not do. I checked in the cottage, but no obvious culprit, so I knew I had to grovel round in the roof space. Please, please let it be a possum and not a python. You see a possum can be ‘collected’ with a plastic bag using the supermarket deli technique of picking it up with hand in bag and inverting the bag thereby not touching the stinking remains. The skin and fur retain the rapidly liquifying remains. For some reason, snakes decay at an accelerated rate and the skin is not strong enough to contain the contents. The roof space consists of rafters and battens with the ceiling of thin cement sheets. Can only progress on hands and knees only putting weight on the woodwork. Oh no! its a snake, right at the edge of the roof where I can only just get to it crawling in there lying down. I retreat for dustpan and brush, so I can scoop it up. I also have a bucket of detergent as I know I will not be able to scoop cleanly. With all this equipment plus a headlight for illumination, I crawl, like a snake, into the tiny space which is the last place on earth I’d rather be. The stench is overwhelming, I have 300mm headroom and my nose almost above the liquified remains. A multitude of inch long black beetles are already at work and I flail at them to deter them from coming in my direction. That is too much information already probably, so I will spare you the bits about fluids splashing in all directions, oops, I said I would spare you that. Many accommodation providers boast about going the extra mile to look after their guests. That was the extra light-year. By the time the guests had arrived, the stench had abated greatly. In fact I couldn’t tell if it was even detectable. My olfactory overload still had me smelling the corrupt remains, interspersed with flashbacks of ‘spice’ fragrant oil which I put around the cottage. As I showed the arriving guests around the cottage, I decided to ‘fess up’ in case they could detect any lingering smell, so I could assure them the problem had been dealt with and any odour would decrease rather than increase. Honesty still remains the best policy, even if economics and politics have abandoned it. My wonderfully tolerant guests expressed an interest in returning again.
In nearly 20 years of B&B, this was the most difficult to reach and the most unpleasant to deal with. It is not the norm and I have only had to deal with 4 or 5 such incidents in the 20 years. Hopefully the next incident is years in the future.
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