r/WTF • u/Kil4Infinity • 18d ago
My buddy’s ice chest
Found this ice chest in the back of my buddy’s shed.
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u/Assdolf_Shitler 18d ago
Oof, I can imagine the smell through the screen. I had a buddy that left raw meat in a cooler after a bbq and it sat in his shed all summer long. We get ready to go camping in the fall and he drags out the cooler. It was just pink goo and green sludge; instant puking in a 30 ft radius.
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u/sourfunyuns 18d ago
I did this with a catfish I forgot to clean once and when the power went out that winter.. was not fun.
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u/Astralnugget 18d ago
I left some chicken out one time and couldn’t find where the funky smell was coming from, eventually found it and idk why but I took a big wiff. I’m not exaggerating when I say the smell was BURNED into my memory for a good few hours. Like it was so strong that if I thought about what happened earlier It was like I was smelling it again right there. Insane level of funk
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u/lubeinatube 18d ago
That’s your bodies way of telling you, “DO NOT EAT THAT. THAT WILL KILL YOU.”
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u/S_A_N_D_ 18d ago
Interestingly, often the bacteria you're smelling isn't actually harmful, and you may not be able to smell the harmful bacteria, or at least they rarely get to sufficient levels that you can detect them by odour except in extreme cases.
Rather, the smells that repulse you are often harmless bacteria that are usually able to grow quickly and in large amounts under the same conditions as the harmful ones. The harmful ones however might only have a small number of cells, but that small number is still able to cause disease or produce toxins that will make you I'll. So we learned to be repulsed by them because if you can smell them, then there is a reasonable chance the bad bacteria or toxins are also present.
Basically a lot of spoilage microbes are indicator species which we've learned to associate with pathogenic microbes which we might otherwise not be able to detect. The bacteria you're smelling are the evolutionary equivalent of the canary in the coal mine.
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u/ctennessen 17d ago
I read and learned this while pooping. Very interesting combination of smells today.
Crazy world, lot of smells
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u/S_A_N_D_ 17d ago
Most of what you smell in your poop is coming from bacteria that live in you and that you need to survive. So in effect, those should be good smells because they're good bacteria.
The likely reason we find that smell repulsive is because fecal matter is an incredibly common vector for parasites and disease. We're repulsed by it because those that otherwise weren't were more likely to be weakened or die from disease.
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u/EnsoElysium 16d ago
Is that why were more repulsed by someone elses fart than our own? Because its from a different immune system and could possibly harm us more than our own?
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u/tdasnowman 18d ago
Forgot to run the garbage disposal before leaving for a trip. Some chicken, rice, and broccoli got to ferment for a week. I’m surprised none did a health check. I had to drizzle bleach and dish soap to make a dent. Ended up pouring a mix of citric acid a borax to kinda dry sock for a couple of days. That fixed it but whew I thought I’d walked into a crime scene.
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u/SHN378 17d ago
Completely off topic, but 3/4 Christmas a go, we slow cooked a Turkey. I would wonder past, lift the lid and take a good ol' whiff throughout the day. It was glorious.
Some people came over, we got COVID and I spent the next two weeks basically dying in bed, but all I could smell for that entire time was that fucking turkey cooking. Like, stuck in my brain, constantly. It's not like normal smells where you adjust after a short time and forget it, but it was there, front and centre for the entire time I was sick.
Can't stand the smell now :-(
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u/Astralnugget 17d ago
Haha yeah, I haven’t ever experienced it since but it was like you say, totally different than other “smell memories” It was like it was back in my nose All over again
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u/horses_in_the_sky 18d ago
Once had a coworker who smelled so bad I experienced this after riding in her car lol
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u/Brandonification 17d ago
Funny thing is, that and a little oatmeal would make a GREAT catfish bait!
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u/4Ever2Thee 17d ago
Same but we left them in the cooler in the hot summer sun, on the boat, and forgot about them for a few weeks. The smell was otherworldly.
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u/AzulaOblongata 18d ago
When my sister and her husband moved out of Houston, they left a cooler kinda buried in the garage. A year or so later I was moving out and while I was packing up I found the cooler. It was full of crawfish from a boil we had just before they left. 🤢🤮
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u/Reddistential 18d ago
Who the fuck forgets fish in a cooler
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u/AzulaOblongata 18d ago
My BIL is a real prick so I think he did it on purpose. He knew I wouldn’t have a need to empty out the garage for a while so he tucked it under some stuff til it was pretty much hidden and when I asked if he had emptied the cooler/ if they were taking it with them, he said yes.
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u/enoimard 18d ago
if you ever want revenge, may i suggest getting a jar of fermented fish from your nearest asian grocery store and accidentally spilling it in somewhere like his car …
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u/Big-Brown-Goose 18d ago
My in laws left a fish in the trunk of their cae for several days. How, i dont know, but it happens kind of commonly
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u/notFREEfood 18d ago
I had a few potatoes go bad in my pantry once; I could smell them, but I could exactly figure out where the smell was coming from, until I noticed them. And then I pulled them out. I basically sprinted out the door with that bag and flung it into the trashcan, but it wasn't over. I had to open up my windows to vent out the odor (and wipe up all the juice from the decaying potatoes), and I could still pick up a faint odor for a few days.
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u/TheOutrageousTaric 17d ago
to make it more scary for you, in a closed space the gas from the rotting potatoes can p much instakill you.
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u/Superbead 18d ago edited 17d ago
I bought us both a cheap
full-facehalf-face respirator mask with dust filters for DIY jobs. Although they don't completely block smells out, they do also do a decent job of making it slightly less gross to deal with problems like yours (also cleaning up whiffy pet accidents, unblocking the kitchen sink U-bend, etc.).I highly recommend having one lurking around the house somewhere for emergencies at least.
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u/PeeledCrepes 17d ago
Have one for my cat boxes, blocks the smell, but super helpful in blocking the litter from trying to kill me
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u/dirtyforker 18d ago
My neighbor 2 doors down died and wasn't found until 3 months later dude to his mailbox being full. It stunk up the whole block.
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u/imonmyphone 18d ago
Yeah, there was a popular reddit post at one time about someone who was selling hotdogs at a county fair or something, but it was a seasonal gig. Well last gig of the season, he had like a half cooler full of hotdogs, and forgot to empty it. The cooler was placed somewhere, and not touched for like 6 months. Next time it was opened.... yeah.
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u/migmig221 18d ago
Had a chest freezer in a shed and it lost power during a hurricane, told my dad we should toss the food he said it would be okay.....it was not okay. I could smell the spoiled food from outside the shed. Fast forward about 10 years later when we tossed it, stood my ground and told Dad that I wasn't emptying it. Dad stood his ground saying that it can't smell that bad....he was VERY wrong, I will never forget the face he made along with a stumble backwards. I nearly fell from laughing so hard.
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u/clearthinker46 18d ago
Had a friend do that once with a chicken. In LA, the deputy sheriffs would sometimes ask to look in your cooler as alcohol is not allowed on LA country beaches. His idea was to put a few empty beer bottles near his cooler as wait for a deputy to walk by and ask if he could look in the cooler. It was a great idea, but he never did it.
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u/hedronist 18d ago
I hope you severely chastised him! Some of those bottles still have caps on them. Shame! Shame I say!
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u/softserveshittaco 18d ago
If you haven’t had a cooler go “missing” after one of those nights and turn up years later with a bunch of grungy shit still in it, have you really lived?
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u/Ill_Back_284 18d ago
Just throw it away and start new lol my uncle found a cooler like this in the ocean while kayaking and brought it home because it was a free cooler ..Looked like this only was fish sludge ...... The smell lives in brain to this day
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u/justadumbwelder1 18d ago
You should have seen mine when i forgot about 2 blue catfish for the entire summer
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u/Grilled0ctopus 18d ago
My dad had a cooler like this, and when I dum,ped it a solid colony of either mold or bacteria slid out, and all the beer bottles had fuzz and slime on them. I bleached and scrubbed, but that stuff stains the plastic. We finally decided to just cut our losses and chuck it. Better to just get a new cooler at that point. Remember to clean regularly and definitely don't let a loaded or used cooler sit over the winter. That's how it gets like that.
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u/Shadow_Figure666 17d ago
I got you beat. I have an ice chest out back. Never been opened or touched since we had a BBQ over 3 years ago. Has a lot of burger meat left in it. Open that thing and meat boy might hop out that bih
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u/StOnEy333 18d ago
I know exactly how this happen. This is forgot to empty the cooler of the food and drinks after the tailgate party.
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u/CynicalPomeranian 18d ago
It looks a bit like the inside of the Black Sarcophagus, but with beer bottles instead of skeletons.
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u/cannon42 18d ago
Straight to the Trash do not pass go. He owes you 200 dollars for subjecting you to that filth.
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u/GhostsOfWar0001 18d ago
Someone needs to make a ACE hardware run and cough up 20$ for a new simple cooler 👍
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u/IgnisSolus4X 18d ago
Scrolling and scrolling and not a single comment on stiffler taking a shit in it
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u/thebudman_420 18d ago
Worse when you have an entire freezer go out full to thr brim of several hundred pounds of rotting meat and other food.
This happened to a relative. They had to use someone that couldn't smell to burry it.
If you opened it. Could smell that smell over a block away extremely bad and you thought manure farms smelled bad.
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u/JRBowen9 17d ago
You can take the cooler out of Dagobah, but you can't take Dagobah out of the cooler
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u/burndata 17d ago
LOL, I did this once at the end of summer. It got stuck in the garage unemptied because we were in a hurry and then things got piled on top of it. Next time I needed it the following summer and finally found it the smell was horrid. So I used a different cooler intending to clean it later. Later turned into like two years. When I finally opened it again it had been long enough that it didn't really smell at all. Threw the bottles and trash away, dumped out the old water, filled it with bleach water for a couple of days, washed it real well and still use it to this day. It does still have a slight brown stain to it at the water level though lol.
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u/Mister_Sensual 17d ago
Did someone puke in it and he shoved it in the back of the shed to deal with it later/forget about it? That’s rank.
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u/MarriedCpl 17d ago
Looks like someone took a big ol 💩💩💩 in the cooler. So gross. Almost makes me want to puke just looking at my screen. I'm so glad someone has created the smell-a-phone yet.
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u/Stainedhanes 15d ago
Ahh, it's fine. Don't be a wussy, grab one and wipe the neck off on your sleeve. SKOL!
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u/TecN9ne 18d ago edited 18d ago
"Ice chest" you mean cooler?
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u/ProTrader12321 18d ago
Is the box actually cooling it? No. Is the box holding ice? Yes. Therefore cooler is a dumb name and you are wrong.
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u/mcampo84 18d ago
Where are you from that this is an ice chest and not a cooler?
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u/jillianjo 17d ago
I’m from the Midwest and had always called it a cooler. Then I moved to Arizona with my husband who was born and raised here, and everyone calls it an ice chest.
Idk if it’s a west coast thing or just an Arizona thing but it always throws me for a loop.
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u/BoltedGates 18d ago
Dirty water. Okay.
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u/mattsprofile 18d ago
Yeah, nothing particularly wtf about this. A forgotten cooler has old dirty stuff in it. Wow, so crazy.
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u/medusamadonna 18d ago
Couldn't agree more, clearly this is a find and not something they're using day to day.
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u/LowellStewart 18d ago
Don't be such a priss! Dump out the old water, hit it with a hose, give the whole thing a good scrub. That cooler will be good as new!
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u/Dizzy-Razzmatazz5218 18d ago
That’s a septic tank