"You can have your own opinion about anything but you can not have your own facts."  BillyBones.

Not exactly pertinent to blacksmithing but you may possibly thank me for it some day....

"Never volunteer to stack hay in an enclosed trailer that had a DEAD SKUNK in it that morning. Alway ask first!!"

Ask me how I know.... Matt.

PLEASE tell me you UNVOLUNTEERED at first whiff! 

I've never had anything to do with skunks but I can tell you about having to pick up a road kill moose that had lain in the brush until the smell began bothering people speeding past at 65mph+. Even using the loader all three of us, the loader, the dump truck and the arrow board pickup stunk to high heaven for days, even after taking the fire hose to them. 

WORSE the superintendent didn't want to pay the charges for dumping the carcass at the land fill and had us put it in the dumpster in the state yard after everybody else had gone home. The garbage pickup refused to put it in his truck so we had to go back and get the swollen maggot wriggling thing out of the dumpster and take it to the landfill a couple days later. 

I wore a multiple fumes respirator and it didn't do the job near well enough. It's one of the memorably worst jobs I had to do working for road maintenance.

Frosty The Lucky.

Frosty, unfortunately the guy who brought the trailer is all stove up; there was no option to "un-volunteer". It was a bad hour. I think your story is worse yet though. Matt.

We had someone poach a deer near us this summer and they dumped the carcass in the brush behind the neighborhood mailboxes. Someone complained about the smell, and the county tried to order everyone in a half mile radius who hadn't had their septic inspected in the last year to have it done and make any requisite repairs within a month or less.

Yeah, about that...smell went down in about two or three weeks, and the county office got a lot of nasty calls, including from yours truly. Ain't forking out four grand to some local septic guy over a dead deer - they ALWAYS find something that needs fixed, whether it exists or not, to the tune of least two or three grand, or they'll report you to the local board of health or sanitation and force it. Bloody fraud and blackmail. I'll open my own and check it, thank you - I know what it's supposed to be doing and when it ain't, it's obvious in a godawful hurry.

As to smells, I ain't hauled a two-week dead moose, but I can tell ya not to burn coal that cats have been using for a litter box.

At least don't burn it while they're using it!

Frosty The Lucky.

When I was in Viet Nam we had to excavate a VC grave to see if there was an arms cache under it (a VC tactic to conceal hidden weapons).  The guy in the grave was pretty well gone and I'm here to tell you that a dead human smells much worse than any other dead animal I have encountered.  I think we are hardwired to recognize something deceased from our own species and to avoid it.  It got into our clothes, hair, and some plastic and took quite awhile to get rid of it all.  A memorable but thoroughly unpleasant experience.  Not my worst memory of VN but right up there.

G

According to a local newspaper article a county employee was asked to remove a dead deer that residents had been complaining about. The deer was 1/2 in a small creek. It was a hot summer and the deer was about 1/2 cooked. The employee grabbed the deer and  about that time it "popped" and blew up all over Him. He told His boss He was going home to shower and the Boss did not argue about it.

If he was talking to the boss face to face I'll BET he didn't argue!

We were in radio contact pretty much all the time and in those situations the foreman or shift lead just sent the "victim" home for clothes and a shower. The time one of the guys at a near camp, not ours, caught an over packed mouthful, he got sent to the hospital for observation and a professional "cleaning." 

The camp office had a pellet rifle on hand to poke vent holes in bloated carcasses to prevent stinkier than normal guys. But . . . 

Frosty The Lucky.

Sometimes the most obvious is the most elusive. ~ BillyBones

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.~ Semper Paratus

I swear by using acids - lemon juice for preference, vinegar if not. Soap just doesn't cut it. Works to get the smell off your hands from fishing too.

How about "I wouldn't trust him as far as I could kick an anvil, barefoot." I forget what book I read that in, but I've used it a few times since, when it fit the individual being discussed.

Matt.

Okay, you're ON! How about, "I wouldn't trust him as far as I could suck an anvil through a straw?"

Hmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.

"He's so slippery he could wriggle through a pritchel hole"?

"He's so slick he slides uphill."

Frosty The Lucky.

"He's so stingy he re-uses forge scale,"

That's actually pretty old OLD school blacksmitherly. Thomas Powers used to save forge scale and drill swarf to run through a bloomery to make wrought iron. It was usually a class project and he used his students as bellows thralls mercilessly. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Wow. That's pretty cool.

How about "He's as useful as a hardy stuck in the wrong end of the hardy-hole"

Matt.

He's as useful as a fuller in a soup eating contest.

Frosty The Lucky.

He could destroy an anvil with a rubber mallet.   

Usually the word "destroy" is replaced with some language not appropriate for this website.

The company I worked for in Prudoe Bay on the North Slope locked a temp in a padded cell with an anvil, to make permanent you had to lose or break it. If you did both you went straight to management. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Control is an illusion, learn to negotiate with all the variables in real time.~ Frosty~

I can’t control the wind. All I can do is adjust my sails. ~Semper Paratus~

AGAIN? How many times have you put something I've said here , Randy?

Frosty The Lucky.

"Normal is a setting on the Clothes Dryer, Nothing Else!!" Niel - Swedefiddle.

That kid could tear up an anvil with a toothpick