Wednesday, January 11, 2012

The worst science

My boys collect rocks and shells and "sea glass" and those "sea beans". The collections were getting all over so I had a BRILLIANT idea. I emptied two of those huge pretzle containers from the warehouse stores, cleaned them all up and put the collections in. Then I filled them with water, because rocks and shells look nice with water. Then put a few drops of bleach to help them from getting algae in them. Shut them tight and put them up on shelves to enjoy.

That was fine, I loved it, rocks were no longer all over, they were in one place. I congratulated myself on my brilliance, I almost wrote a super mom blog post about it.

See we love science here, anything remotely resembling a science experiment is something you can expect to be going on here. We do NOT love unintentional science experiments.

Some reaction occured. I don't know what. Maybe the bleach and the sea beans? Could it have been water and sea beans? I mean we found the things IN THE OCEAN, how can they not be waterproof.

Our cat snuck in and slept in the kid's room a few nights. Sometimes she has accidents. Also the kid has pet rats in there. So I assumed the stink was pet related. Cleaned the room, cleaned the rat cage, so on. Stink still there. Changed sheets, cleaned the kid, asked about gas... Still stinky. So I took my nose on a hunt.

OHMYHECK PEOPLE. Do NOT do the sea crap in a plastic jug thing. Pretty please do NOT. I thought the water had gotten skunky. I wondered why I could smell it still shut, but ok. Take them to the sink to dump them out. HORROR. I mean HORROR PEOPLE. Something happened to the sea beans. They split open. But that's not all. The insides of them turned (or always was?) into a white goo. The white goo is the most horrible smelling smell EVER. We had a snail die on us once, that is supposed to be one of the worst smells on earth. I promise you whatever the white goo is that leaks out of a seabean after a few months in water is worse. A million times worse. You will want to die if you smell it. I'm thinking about moving. (not really)

Of course the boys instantly know what I'm thinking, "Throw it ALL away!" And they start begging me to save the collections some way. You know, some way that involves me further handling the horror.
So I dumped the collections on the patio. Had the boys shoo the chickens away and sprayed them. A LOT. Of course I discarded the sea beans. Then more spraying. Tonight after the chickens go to bed I am thinking about throwing bleach all over them. Then more water.

When they are dry they can come back inside and live in plastic jars again. But with no water.

I need 5 hot showers.

3 comments:

Denise ~ Paper Ponderings said...

Oh my...worse than rotten gooey potatoes???

Erin said...

YES. I'm not kidding, it's worse than anything.

Laura Holte said...

We've had the snail and a clam die so my heart goes out to you. Of course, we will feel your pain from afar. :) We'll have to go to the beach together sometime or a hike on Little Talbot to do some collecting. My boys LOVE it, too. I want to see the sea glass!