The Dead cat at Lavender Bay
March 1st 2010 21:00
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My sister reports that she has been having contact with felines as well – but not the sort she wants.
Now that the weather is warmer, she has been exercising every night. She takes long walks around the Kirribilli/Milsons Point/Lavender Bay area. Walking around Lavender Bay one night, she noticed a very powerful smell. It smelt like old, rotting garbage. My sister was wondering why no one had reported it to the council when she saw a dead cat on the road.
“It was all puffy and there were flies everywhere so it must have been dead for a while, but not dead long enough for there to be maggots,” said my sister.
I was fascinated by the detail; I have yet to smell something that had been long dead. “What does it smell like?” I asked again.
She repeated her description.
“It’s funny you say that,” I replied. “My doctor said exactly the same thing about dead bodies. He said they smell like a large chunk of rotting meat that has been left outside baking in the sun for days.”
That said, Fred, my cleaner/caretaker friend says dead people have a distinctive smell. “Once you’ve smelt it, you never forget it as it’s a sickly sweet odour.”
I have had three non-close encounters with dead bodies. The people had not been dead long enough to exude any odour. The first time happened when I was eleven. I was waiting for my old woman to come out of surgery and I saw a medical team wheel a body past me. The head was covered. It was not until a few years later when I was telling the school dux this story that he told me the person had been dead. The second time was when I was heading for the train station on the way to work. This meant going through the main drag of Kings Cross. An area had been cordoned off and a large buff coloured sheet of fabric had been secured so that no one could see inside the area. Still, the sun was shining through the sheet – enough for me to make out a dead body on the road. The last time was about two years ago. Someone had committed suicide by jumping off the end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The body had landed near Cumberland Street which is near The Rocks. Again, the area had been cordoned off. Police were everywhere, trying to keep people away. I was wondering what was going on when I overheard a policeman telling an inquisitive passer-by what had happened.
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