When I was child, it was a summer day like any other. I was playing around the front yard with my bike, until I started smell something in the dry dusty air. We lived on a Aboriginal Reservation at the time. To help paint a picture, the roads have no pavement it’s just dirt and there’s trails everywhere because of how forested it was. Houses weren’t yard to yard like most neighborhoods, some would be completely hidden if it wasn’t for the poorly kept road. The Lake’s smell can always be sensed when you’re near it, so if you ever got lost you could just along the lake’s edge until you hit the town. However this day, it wasn’t just the smell fresh water and dirt I smelled that day. It was combination of urine soaked fur and unthawed meat, gagging immediately I threw my bike down to clasp my nose. Teary eyed I went across the road to see if it was over there too, thankfully it wasn’t. There wasn’t much wind that day, so this stink must of been slowly been creeping out from it’s source. I proceeded back toward my house with caution of that horrid stench. NOPE. It was still there. I went inside the front door to see if was coming from there. Nothing. I can’t even smell it at all in here. Grabbing some toilet paper, I ripped some into little pieces to stick in my nostrils and headed back outside. This nasty odor seemed to be coming from the left side or North side of the house.
I check the wood pile incase a mouse or some other small animal got stuck and died. It happened sometimes, we had a old wood stove for our heating in those days. Hence the collection of spilt logs piled into a wall. The smell was definitely coming from the back of the house. I walked about fifteen feet until the nose plugs couldn’t block the now pungent sour rotting smell, the thought came to me. What if it’s a old moose hide or maybe someone left some fish out when they were gutting it. Feeling the bile in my mouth I trekked on. I managed to get to the back of my house but ultimately found nothing. I check the shed near by and also nothing. Just old crazy carpets (plastic sheet slide) and toboggins. Leaving the shed, I noticed the smell was even more stronger toward the North of my place. The trees, the forest’s edge was that way though.
I marched toward the brush that littered the first thirty or so feet before the birch trees. Crawling under some leaves and sticks through the brush I made it unscathed, oh God the odor that assaulted my nose when I stood up. Wiping my eyes clear of the tears, I looked around the ground and still nothing. I wish I hadn’t investigated further into the wood but then I wouldn’t have this story to share. I remember scratching my head because I felt something fall onto my hair, it was just leaf. However, this caused me to look put at the trees to see it or them. There was four dead mangled cats hanging from the birch trees with their offal spilling out, someone put nails into the trees to create a makeshift ladder to put them there… to this day I still don’t know who did that to those poor animals. I threw up then and there and just ran. I didn’t tell my mom, she was already pretty protective in those days. She’d never let me out again if she found out at the time, at least that’s what I thought in my kid brain. In hindsight, I should’ve told someone or got an adult to take them down. I never went back so I actually have no idea if they’re still there. I don’t think so, it was over 20 years ago.
Edit: fixed some typos and spelling errors.