Weird News – It Happens

Now that’s one nasty story!   I lived a good many years near one of the biggest beef feed lots in Colorado so I am not new to stinky, but I imagine 40 tons of rotten meat would be way worse!   I’d charge the owner double.

BRIDGEWATER, S.D. (AP) — Behind the freezer doors at a meat plant mysteriously abandoned by its owner, the 44 tons of bison meat managed to hold its own for months, masked by the brutal chill of two South Dakota winters.

Once the power was cut and spring thaw arrived, nature took over. And enough rotting meat to fill a high school gym did exactly what you’d expect: It stank.

It stank at the bank. It smelled at the law office. It reeked at the cafe. Even the jewelry store wasn’t immune. Everyone in this tiny town could smell it, everywhere they went. A putrid odor so downright nasty the cleaners sent to mop up the gooey mess of liquefied meat – topped by a blanket of swarming white maggots and buzzed by a legion of flies – gave up after two days.

“You’ve also got the city offices, the grocery store and the post office. And then you spread out to the local residences,” said Mayor Marty Barattini, pointing to each place. “This is a small town. We have just over 600 people, so that stench was enough to overwhelm the entire town. Not just this street.”

Fed up with the smell, a brave crew of 18 city and county workers took matters into their own hands this summer and stormed the plant to haul away the putrid meat and take back their town. What came next was the biggest indignity: Three months after the cleanup, the owner still hasn’t paid the $11,151 cleanup bill, and owes about $14,085 in unpaid property taxes on top of it.

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