Did Mesopotamia Stink?

So, my daughter's teacher assigned this project in which each student has to make a "Mesopotamian Brick". The kids were given a sheet of paper detailing the different types of materials they could and couldn't use (plaster and clay were no-no's while dirt, cereal, straw etc. were ok).

It took us about a week or two to figure out what we wanted to make the brick out of, and we finally settled on digging up some dirt in my parents back yard and mixing it with Cocoa Krispies, dried weeds and very soft Japanese rice. Mind you, there was no real method to our madness other than the fact that we wanted to find a way to make the dirt sticky and slightly damp so it would form a brick.

After mixing all the items together we packed it tightly into a shoebox and left it in the windowsill in my mother's kitchen.

This was about a week ago.

Yesterday, my mom called me and said that she and my dad thought they had a dead rodent in their kitchen. I guess on Thursday evening they started to smell something a little funny and by Friday they thought that maybe the kitchen sink was clogged, so they poured a bunch of Drano down the drain and tried to flush out the stinky blockage. When the stench didn't dissipate by the next morning they began tearing apart the kitchen trying to find the source of the terrible smell.

It was afternoon on Saturday when I spoke to her, and by that point they had moved the fridge, cleaned out under the sink and who knows what else they tore apart. My mom said she was so frustrated because the smell was getting worse and they could not figure out where it was coming from. She was convinced that it had to be some dead rotting animal somewhere, so she looked outside and passed by the kitchen window. The stink was awful and at the same moment, it dawned on her and my dad that maybe, just maybe...

It was the BRICK!

That lovely brick that my daughter so painstakingly made, smells like a foul pile of shit, vomit and quite possibly rotting flesh. I just got my first whiff of it about an hour ago and it was FOUL! My husband and I were cracking up at the thought that this putrid thing was inside my parents house for over a week... We had a hard time getting it from our front porch to our patio without simultaneously vomiting and fainting. I kid you not, it was one of the worst things I have ever smelled.

Can you imagine...there are 30 kids in my daughter's class and they are all bringing their stinking, "pile of shit", bricks to school on Thursday...

I think I am going to find a sub to take over my usual Friday "parent volunteer" spot. Yee-haw!