Boys, having spent many years working in and knocking about fish houses I thought I had smelled every creature that swims in the Atlantic Ocean in various states of decomposition. Never in my life have I come across something that stank so bad it took your breath away. And the damn thing wasn't dead for thirty minutes. I give you The Loggerhead Turtle, Caretta caretta. This one was run over by a sixty foot yacht. And yes we had the wildlife guy with us, he said they do start to go ripe fast. This one was estimated to be twenty two to twenty seven years old.

Reminds me of a girl I dated...

Are they endangered? And how big was he? I don't know much about saltwater critters.


Travis

uh.....why did you take the smelly thing out of the water and put it on the deck?

The smell or the look?

I'm confused. Are you still talking about the girl, or shrecks' new pet?

Endangered yes, we called the Coasties and they called the turtle rescue guys. Very nice chap went with us to see if we could find it, a no schit nuclear physicist by day and a turtle rescuer in the late afternoons. Even he couldn't handle the smell and he does this for fun. They are going to necrop it and they actually have a turtle burial ground on Holdens Beach. Who knew.
The shell is about 3' long, 2 1/2' wide and he weighs about 150lbs.

Well actually neither my boat driver or I would have thought that a salt water critter would go bad that quick. You fish salt water, 30 mikes, in the water. Not even a bluefish will start to stink that quick. And they are going to necrop it so I did my part for the advancement of Marine Science.

So, do you think it's them shell noodles that stink or is it the leaking turtle fluids?

Ummm... That's a little odd.

That pic doesn't do him justice. That's a big fuggin' turtle!


Travis

Picture does make him look small, the gunnels on that boat are 2 1/2 feet wide, it's a 23 foot Jones Brother.

You sure you never dealt w crabs

Next one you find like that, grab ahold and hold it up for us.


Travis

That has been covered.


Travis

They ain't got to do no necropsy or autopsy or any other opsy on that stinkin thing. It's plain as day it got whacked with a propeller & even if it didn't get whacked with a propeller that's close enough. The results are the same as if it got whacked with a propeller.


Mike

Mike, I got a good look at the shell, crushed straight down by an azzhole hauling azz in his sixty foot boat. Same boat tore a floating dock off and into the aiww. And no I did not get it's name, something my boat driver has reminded me of several times, "you always get the name" or "I can't believe you didn't get the name".

Dead snapping turtles smell bad too...I can only imagine..

Whacked by a propeller weren't it ?

That's OK though sombody's gettin a big govmint grant to stir around in that stinkin critters stinkin insides & write down on a piece of paper "whacked by a propeller"


Mike

No, not any prop marks on it, trust me I know what prop marks look like. And the turtle folks are all volunteers, as far as I know both the Holdens Beach folks and the Topsail Island hospital are not state/federal funded.

dont know why but dead reptiles smell worse than any other dead critter....

OK , just plain old "whacked by a boat" then.


Mike

That's the truth & have you ever noticed that the body of a dead snake doesn't last long ? , it will just melt and disappear in about a day.

Mike

That would be my professional opinion.

Glad you told us the size of that turtle. The turtle looked small but I guess it was the boat that made it look small.

So, I guess it smelled worse than a dead and bloated opossum?

Ernie

this one is a Juvenal logger head, about the same size.

Not true. Dead dimocraps and dead muzzies smell good.

I guess your son has never taken the remains of a butchered deer (skin,head,legs,etc),and put it in the back of your fishing SUV(parked for the season,used to get to that special lake,way back in the woods,with only a terrible road for access) ,where it went undiscovered till late spring the next year,like what happened to my sister.
It stunk so bad they left it parked with the windows open for 2 years,and finally just junked it.A Mitsubishi Montero,it started right up and drove away after 2 years,but it still would make you gag.

He put it in there so his dog wouldnt eat any of it.

Oh but I did, with my cousin's help, throw the bones from a white tail deer into a 64 quart cooler and then open it after two weeks of September sun. His cooler BTW. Not as bad as today.

One of my cousins had a freezer in his garage full of deer meat
that either broke down or someone unplugged during the summer
the stench about knocked you down when you went into the garage. He tied a chain to the frig and drug it out with his
tractor just to get rid of it.

So, back to the turtle. Did you guys make soup, or what?

So, did you pinpoint the stink? was it the shell noodle oodlers or was it the turtle juices? Did you get your nose in there and pinpoint the source?

What are shell noodle oodlers?

The noodle shaped, gut colored oodlers hanging out of the busted shell.

"oodler" is a field dressing medical term used to describe animal innard pieces that otherwise wouldn't have a name at all.

See, thems turtle oodlers.

I can tell because they are hanging out of a turtle.

as bad as it might have been, I can't imagine it being worse than this

pour some orange juice inside that shell, a little duck tape, some jumper cables....

Laughing, gagging, puking, and stripping, all mixed together!

My gut hurts from laughing!!

Never been around any smell that gags me, but was around a girl one time long ago over in Arkansas that spooked the hell outta me

When I saw that sombish nekkid, I didnt know wheather to go get a 55 gal. drum of seven dust, or a [bleep] weed-eater, fire that mutha up and start lookin for blackberries

Gunner

i dont know how to describe it but sub a 10 pound snake or turtle for the deer parts and meat in the same situation and you would have something that smells several magnitudes worse.....ive happened to be around some nasty smelling stuff before including whole cows ripening in 100 degree heat but a coming home to a 10 pound boa that died a couple days before and spent the whole weekend cooking on a 98 degree heat pad damn near makes yah think bout just moving to a new house the hell with all your stuff, you can always buy new.....

Where and when was it when it was hit. We saw several turtles Sunday in the AIW behind Oak Island. We also saw lots of large boats going very fast.

Ok, now I know to not pick up an R-Kansas girl!

Got close to a turkey vulture once, the smell was terrible.

They can get bad if they come through the windshield.

If ya accidentally do, put her back down real easy like, dont wanna go crackin' open that crust. LMAO

Gunner

One of my uncles bagged bodies one day in the Phillipines
when he was in WWII. Said it was a smell he will never forget.

Down here we wood hav made some turtle soup. You use enuff garlic and hot saus and you can get passed the smell.

bummer, they are fairly interesting critters. This one is the same in Roger's photo above. He was successfully rescued, after biting a shark bait.

Forty some years ago I was working in a feedlot over in the Heart of the Columbia Basin about three or four times a week we would have a dead cow or steer turn up in the pens and it was my job with helper to go into the pens with a tractor and chain to pull the dead critter out of the pens over to a collection point for a rendering company to come and pick them up once a week. Believe some of those carcasses would get get pretty ripe sitting out in the sun with a 100+ degree heat for a few days. I got to the point where I could grab a deep breath hold it go to the drop point unhook the chain and get the hell out of there before taking another breath, but if something went wrong and I had to take a breath in the drop zone it would definitely be a big time gag session.

Looks to me that none of you fellas have ever saved a mama Cow that had a dead calf in her for several days,......

and had to pull it out, a piece at a time.

I bet Border Doc could get ya' right up to speed on that stunt.

Turtle ?

.....pshawwww

GTC

Yessir, Vicks Salve and a damn good pair of gloves are yer bestests Buds in that case.

Gunner

Worked for the railroad years ago. Had a brakeman that would bring a bag of boiled blue crabs and sit in the second engine and eat them between Savannah and Macon.

Once he forgot to throw his shell and gut bag out.... and after sitting a couple of days, closed and in the hot sun, the engine was uninhabitable for it's next trip out.

As was the custom, the railroad fired his ass for 30 days.. Ran his ass off as we would say Still funny to think about

Small World..... 2 days ago my wife tells me there is a big rat snake caught in some bird netting on a garage shelf..... I really dislike snakes..... We called a friend who is a serious reptile keeper..... Jaynes plan A was to have Leigh come rescue this 7 foot long snake.... Leigh says a rat snake is going to be so mad after being caught in a net for a day or so that she doesn't want to "rescue" it.....


I feel obliged to man up and deal with snake zilla..... I tell Jayne I'll shoot it.... She tells me to hold off on that for a bit.... A few minutes later she tells me she got the branch clippers and cut the snakes head off...... Seems she was afraid I would blast a hole in the garage wall rather than figure a way to drag the netted snake outside first.....( did I mention I really don't like snakes?)...

I had put off the chore of hauling off the deceased snake until this afternoon I went out into the garage to discover an amazingly bad smell.... That snake was decomposing like some sort of unnatural zombie dead creature.....

I got it hauled off without tossing my lunch..... Barely

BTDT, with neither. Trying to sleep with yer' nose far from your arms ain't easy, either.

The Mama Cow made it,.....and THAT was the point of the exercise, I guess. Had I known, I gotta' say I'd have just SHOT her, and been done with it.

Some day over a cold one, lemme tell ya' about the first time stickin' a bloated Cow Beast (Trocar Deal), ....getting directions over a radio, from the boss, while wearing my best duds, and on the way to a wedding.

GTC

That dude was a good sport. Wouldn't mind pounding a few with him.

We get huge turtles here too. Tell you what, though. You think a dead turtle is bad? I'm guessing not many have have ever pulled up to a whale carcass of maybe 20 tons, floating in July for a few weeks first. It is enough to about bowl a man over. A smell that hits you like the proverbial hammer. A smell that makes you immediately, instinctively backpedal.

Sheet mon, even having a whale spray you with the mist from a shot out of its blowhole is enough to make a man's eyes water and make one lightheaded.

That sucks for the turtle, by the way. And not a turtle girl to be seen. Lose, lose, man.

Thanks for sharing pics Shreck.

Rendering tubs where they chemically melt flesh away from bones are really gross smelling.

Been there and done that more times than I care to remember. A fetotomy was where we seperated the men from the boys.

The boys got laughed at a lot

For an R-Kansas chick, gothcha!

Been there and done that, and it is not fun.

used smelly kids diaper that accidentally got left in a hot car.

Nothing can top a "Stoma Bag". We found one in a dumpster one time, it was a real heavy duty bag and pink inside. We smashed the bag and even before the smell registered, we were bent over heaving like little girls...

In Texas the brown dimocraps leave them anywhere but in a garbage can. You can find them run over in most store parking lots.

There are lots of stinks that I have not smelled. Dead sea turtles and whales being two of them.
Tell you what though there ain't nothing like a dead human after about a week in the hot.

sounds like ya'll need to know the jopy of picking up the dead in aa turkey house in august aftre the 100 plus heat has killed about ten thousanf of the nasty things . Not bad in the mourning, yhey still hold thgether (mostly) still might lose a leg ;by noon they have decayed till you need a pichfork and by night a seed shovel cause they are mostly liquid inside ahh good times

I've done that gig, when I was in high school I worked with the local vet for a few years. Saving those mama cows was a coin flip at best...when the vet would reach in and grab a leg and pull out with a hand full of hide, you knew it was going to be a rugged call.

Five miles south of the holdens beach bridge, aiww.

HOLYHELLFIRE on the Trocar punch Cross and ya got a deal on the Cold One, maybe with a coupla 8-Bores and a Sharps Rifle or two sittin' there coolin there pipes while the cold one's are becoming quickly extinguished.

Gunner

Hey Shrap, is a Stoma bag some sort of waste from a Hospital?

Gunner

I will admit that I have never dealt with the dead unborn calf thing...and I really don't want to.

Turtles though...I have come across a couple of those at sea before. Not sure how long they had been dead but the boat props definitely make sure they are well "aerated."

The worst I have ever dealt with was rotten chum. I usually chop up a bunch of menhaden and freeze them in one gallon plastic buckets with a fair amount of menhaden oil added to it--that really boosts the slick while you are waiting on the rest of the block to thaw.

One day I was taking this new chic out for a day of catching some reds, jacks, and sharks. I made sure to put a few extra blocks of chum in the boat so I wouldn't run out. Had a great day on the water and still only used one block of chum. Right when I got home it started pouring rain and I parked the boat but left it loaded. I figured I would get to it that eveining. Of course I fell asleep...then forgot when I woke from my nap...then forgot again when I went to work the next day...and the day after that...and the day after that.

Two weeks later I started to wonder what "that smell" was. When I decided to go fishing again, I went to go load the boat (that was still loaded from two weeks prior) and I found the source of the smell. In the heat of an Alabama August on the coast, four gallons of chopped baitfish will completely disentigrate in their rotting juices and begin to permeate through plastic containers. It even stained the gelcoat of the compartment they were sitting in. I was almost knocked out when I opened that hatch. Pulling each one of those containers was the worst smelly experience I have ever been through. I had to open the hatch, refrain from ralfing, grab a bucket, go pour, refrain ralfing, swallow a little bit of vomit, and dispose of the bucket...then go back and do it again.

I make sure to unload the boat no matter the weather now.

sounds like you got four gallons of catfish bait ready to go !!

Pshawww, I've eaten my lunch on top of worse.

One of the more memorable smells in my life was at a grainery. Apparently thousands of generations of maggots had been living off the rotten grain dust on the tin roof - a couple inches of live maggots feeding off several inches of dead maggots. A fire turned the whole shebang into a huge frying pan, fire water turned it into stew, and several days in the summer sun turned it into something that was too loose to shovel and too thick to pump.

We knocked off the roof vents and squeegeed the unholy mess through the holes to splash on the concrete floor 30-feet below.

I saw the heading and thought this was a follow up of the Haggis discussion.

Throw the damn thing back in the water! Lol

Shot a bunch of turtles in a stock pond once at my FILs ranch in central Texas. Had a guy that made some cool looking jewelry and stuff from the shells, and was willing to pay me a good chunk of money for the shells. Went back the next morning to pick all the dead turtles that I had shot the evening before, that had now floated to the shore. The stink was unreal. Needless to say, I was not able to collect any shells. Wow that was nasty.
Nothing tops the smell of a body bag with a decomposing body in it. I used to be an x-ray tech at a big hospital in Lubbock Texas. It was also the largest forensics lab in the panhandle. We used to have go shoot full body x-rays of dead people that had been killed. Trying to find bullets, or whatever killed them. I open a body bag up one day, and a flood of maggets came over the side, and continued to flow out. I will never forget the popping sound they mad when you stepped on them and the stink was unreal, and it sticks to you and your clothes.

Toby Joe

You guys are bringing back some "fond" memories.

When I was a young lad I worked for a farmer that raised grain and also had feeder steers. One of my jobs was to drag the dead animals to the "bone yard", which was just a pit out in the middle of a field. I would drag that thing around the pit until it fell in and then had to go unhook the chain.

Another fun thing was going down in the pit of the elevator and scoop out the grain that leaked out of the leg. The pit had some water in it and when you broke that crust the nastiest smell you can imagine came out. Had to scoop it out with a coffee can because there wasn't enough room to move around down there. I only had to do it twice but I won't be forgetting it.

Ah, the joys of working Homicide on the gulf coast in the summertime. Remember it fondly, NOT!! Jim

I have always been amazed how a single dead rodent in the
wall will stink up a house like there are 10 dead ones in there.