Ooo that smell, don't cha smell that smell?

The trailers we load at FedEx can get pretty hot. In the heat of the day, in direct sunlight a closed trailer with no air circulation can get up to 150 degrees. Now imagine if, lets say a rat managed to get in to one of those trailers before it closed and died. And let’s say that trailer sat for three days over the weekend with the dead rat marinating in the hot, uncirculated summer air. And let’s say you were the one who open that trailer Tuesday morning at the Fort Worth hub. Can you imagine what that would smell like? Well I don't have to imagine.

I wasn't the one who opened the trailer but my area is close enough to the unload for the smell to easily and quickly drift over. I've never smelled anything like that. I can't really think of an adjective that adequately describes that scent. I feel most sorry for the guy who had to unload it (the packages still have to get delivered). But the odd thing was, when the trailer was finished unloading, no animal was to be found. We expect to find something, a rat or a squirrel... but there was nothing. But as the smell reached to the far corners of the building we began to become suspicious. One manager after another got on the radio to complain about the foul odors infiltrating their senses. As it turns out, a rat must have managed to get in to the trailer and made its way through the cardboard into a case of chocolate. It then must have proceeded to eat it's self to death (if it's bad for dogs then it stands to reason it would be harmful to rats as well). But then, since the rat was in a box and obscured from normal view, the package got unloaded and put into the system. The intricate system of conveyor belts transported the rat across the building and back again, launching an aromatic onslaught in every work area in its path. The animal was finally located and disposed of but not before every one's lungs had been contaminated by the pure stench of death.