Once got called to help the Police search a unit in Kings Cross,
in Sydneys red light district. Bit strange thinks I, the Police don't usually need the Fire Brigade to help them do searches in peoples homes. The reason soon became obvious though. The said unit was the home of a not so recently deceased heroin addict and prostitute, only she was still in attendance.
Now I've seen a few dead people in my twenty odd years in the Fire Brigade, and they don't usually worry me, except for the first one which scared the shit out of me. But this one had a bit of a twist. You see, the departed lady of the night, had a pet poodle, awww, cute, I hear you think, she had a good heart after all. Maybe so, but you'd be hard pressed to tell because the cute little poodle had been munching down on its deceased owner for at least two weeks. As the owner had died wearing only a pair of panties, snookems had decided that all that exposed flesh was just too good to pass up, and had proceeded to eat her face, breasts, stomach and the tops of her thighs. In fact the only way the Police at the scene could determine the sex was to look down inside the corpses knickers to see if there was any meat and two veg. But if the sight wasn't bad enough, the smell was unbelievable.
Two week old rotten corpse, stale dogshit, fresh dogshit, and some sickly perfume stuff the Police had used to try and mask the smell.
Which is why we were there, to lend the Police our breathing apparatus because you literally couldn't breath in there without spewing. I know, I tried and failed.
The bizarest thing was as they were removing what was left of the body, and discussing who was going to drop the (by now quite fat) pooch off at the RSPCA, the next door neighbour pipes up and says" Oh, he's a nice little chap, I'll have him if nobody minds". Stuffed if I know how you'd be able to sleep at night in a unit knowing that your dog had a taste for human flesh.
(Firemansam, Mon 25 Jun 2007, 2:07, Reply)