Science Experiment

This morning, Eva and I were lucky enough to unwittingly be part of a neat science experiment. Here's what happened:

Eva overslept due to our late night at my nephew's graduation. I decided to take her to school after dropping Gorby. Well, this was extremely fortuitous, as we would soon discover. On the way into the car, we smelled something that was strongly fishy as the three of us lingered in the mudroom. First, I powdered Eva's shoes with Odor Eater powder as I do most days. Though she is a gorgeous little girl, she has super smelly feet. Anyway, that didn't seem to be the problem, which I discovered after she shoved a shoe into my nose when I asked, "Are your shoes the smelly culprit?"

The three of us could still smell the icky odor as we got into the car so searched the car fervently. Gorby declared from the depths of the minivan, "Here! I found it!" and handed me a cereal bar wrapper. Um, OK. "Gorby--that's not it! Come on now." We decided to press on after the three of us concurred that it was probably something in the garbage or recycling in the garage.

We dropped Gorby at school and finally arrived Eva's school. Since she was over an hour late, the parking lot was quiet and I pulled up right in front of the door. We exited the vehicle and, suddenly, the lights went on in Eva's brain.

"OH!" she exclaimed, "IT'S THE BIRD'S EGG!" I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. You see, the other day (please don't tell me it was Friday, but I fear it was), Eva ran over to me as we were hanging out in the front yard (i.e., kids were playing ball and I was playing Scramble on my iPhone). "Mommy, look, it's a blue birdy egg!" I looked up, wrinkled my nose and we both noted that it looked like something was inside the egg. Then one of the following two things occurred:

1) I jumped up, dragged out the microscope and we both excitedly inspected the interior of the bird's egg under intense magnification.
or;
2) I kept wrinkling my nose, said, "Hm," continued my Scramble game, and said, "Wash your hands REALLYWELLWITHSOAP!!!!"

Anyway, Eva decided to place the shell into a baggie and take it to her beloved first grade teacher Ms. G.

And there we were, many days later (shudder!), in front of a venerated Torah institution with a baggie thrown on the ground. The contents of said bag were: 1) bird's egg, 2) gooey liquid and 3) maggots. Yes, you read that right. The two of us looked at each other and then started laughing. This laughter was the kind where you are in disbelief and don't quite know what to do, not the one where you are reading, for example, a blog and laughing hysterically. But since I was the mother (darn it), I had to figure out something quick. Good grief.

"Wow, Eva," I said, "Those are maggots in there."
"What are maggots?" she asked.
"Well. maggots are little bugs that like to eat dead stuff." Here is where I realized that the contents of that little blue egg must have been an embryo or dead bird. Luckily, just yesterday, I was listening to the "This American Life" podcast about gory crime scenes and it talked about maggots so I instantly identified those little guys.

So what did I do? You ask. I wondered the same thing. After trying not to die, I sprung into action. "Eva!" I shouted, "I have Clorox wipes in the car, let's use them!" I started scrubbing out her backpack (luckily it was just the outer zipper pocket, and there wasn't actual spooze in there, just odor. I scrubbed it out with about 27 wipes and took out 5 plastic bags from my car to throw maggot-bag into and tie up with a plan to toss it into the outdoor Starbucks garbage can, and wishing I was there right then.

I asked Eva to grab my keys and iPhone (she hadn't touched maggot-bag) so I could do a surgical scrub after I signed her in. I left my stuff in the office and started scrubbing like crazy in the hallway washing sink. I used so much foaming soap that it was all over the sink, the soap dispenser and the paper towel dispenser. I also ran into Zsa Zsa's teacher who is about 10 months pregnant (and adorable still) and when I told her the story she looked extremely queasy. Oops.

I grabbed my stuff and drove quickly to Starbucks so I could dispose of the bag. On the way, I used my five different flavors of hand sanitizer. However, there is not enough hand sanitizer or soap in the world to scrub the memory of what was brewing in the baggie right in my very own Eva's backpack, right in my very own mudroom. I'm happy I took her in late because think how many days those maggots (AAARRGH) could've lived in there (Big Shot Husband usually drops them at school extremely quickly on his way to work, with no time to sniff, locate and fumigate). So I will leave you here while I go wash my hands again. With lye.