When we got back to apartment here in Greenville after spring break on Sunday, we noticed a few things out of place. Some glass beads on the shelf by the door were all over the floor. The clock I had built for CA class last semester was knocked over on the hutch. The pole in the stairwell window was knocked out. And the Lionel train caboose had been knocked off the CD rack I built. We had had some pretty dangerous thunderstorms over spring break, with lots of wind. I assumed maybe an especially loud rumble had sent things flying.

Yesterday, I noticed a strange smell coming from my sister's room upstairs. I though it was rotten wood from when the replaced the heater system on Tuesday. When we got home last night (after being stuck at the Newman center because all the street was blacked out, including street lights), I noticed the smell was stronger. "Man," I said "what IS that smell? It's like a dead mouse (we had one unknownst to us in the trashcan for a week once), but not quite.

I went off the the bathroom, but through the door I could here my sis "Matt...I found what the smell is from. It's a dead bird. And it's under my bed."

Sure enough, I looked under her bed, and there was a dead starling. Suddenly it ALL made sense. Why everything had been knocked over. Why the bad smell. And now as we started looking...we realized that there was bird poop everywhere in the window sills, on the run, on my table, on the back of this computer chair...we had overlooked it before.

So I grabbed the stinking starling carcass in a trashbag and hurled it in the dumpster outside. My sis spent an hour trying the get the stench out of the rug. We had the creeps all night. Ugh...touching that dead bird with it's beak open and it's tongue hanging out and that repulsive smell...ugh! We still cannot figure out how it got in.

Now how is THAT for a BIZARRE MOMENT?

--Matt