To ask what's the worst thing you've sniffed by accident?

[CheeseAndSprinkleys]

I have sniffed sanitary towels, unsed, and not by accident, it said scented on the pack in the supermarket so I had to have a sniff, but that's not the worst

Really rotten potatoes. Don't normally buy them but got some put them in a draw and forgot about them. Went on holiday came back and could smell them as walked through the door.

Bed sores
Gangrene
C Diff
Man who hadn't washed for a very very long time
A male ferret in heat
Floss after flossing around an infected gum

None by accident as such.

Venous leg ulcer slough removal.

Tripe being boiled in a tiny, poorly ventilated kitchen. I can't imagine boiling shit could smell worse.

Dog after rolling in fox poo, definitely. I couldn't work out what the smell was, it smelled like potent death and rotten things. Then I realised it was the dog.

Several shampoos later I got it down to a mild hum.

A few summers ago my car started to smell really unpleasant. It got worse and worse until I was driving around with all the windows wound down so I could breathe. Every few days I would have a look round the car for anything disgusting but just couldn't work out what it was. I was a bit scared of what I might find so didn't look as hard as I could have tbh

I snapped when someone asked me for a lift and I had to refuse because the smell was so bad. I made DH do a fingertip search and he eventually unearthed a unbelievably rank, decomposing fillet of fish which he'd bought about 6 weeks previously from Tesco and had forgotten it existed. Must have fallen out of bag and was wedged right underneath the front passenger seat. Bleurgh.

Month old bottle of formula. It was disgusting!

Skunk (not the recreational kind). If you have never smelled skunk pong before... It starts off as fairly tolerable, and you wonder why people make such a fuss about skunks. The stench develops, and burns right through you, then you just cannot believe how terrible it is.

Also dead mouse. When I was little, my mum found one that had got into a drawer and proceeded to reek. It was terrible.

Ooh, and a dog that needed its anal glands clearing out. Its owner was very old and had no sense of smell. I almost fell over with the stench when I stepped over the threshold. It was like an airborne poison.

My caravan had been really whiffy for a while. I could not for the life of me work out where the smell was coming from. I endured it all through Glastonbury, then before setting off for another festival a couple of months later, by which time it had got even worse, I thought I really need to investigate because the smell was making me sick.

Turned out, I'd left some fish fingers and chips in the freezer compartment the YEAR BEFORE at Glastonbury. They were by now 14 months old, and had turned to liquid. Cleaning that out was possibly the worst experience of my life. It was the consistency of runny cat shit. I have a photo somewhere but don't want to traumatise you all.

The cheap quality marijuana, it reeks!!

A mixture of bleach and amonia while I mixed old ingredients to clean the loo. I almost passed out!

"The shirt of a particularly fragrant colleague."

I read "shirt" as "shit" there - I thought he'd stunk the work lavvies out.

My moronic DH had one job when we moved, to empty the freezer. As we were moving to a house with integrated appliances it was stored in our garage. After completely renovating the house (3 months) I said to him we should sell the white goods we're not using? That are taking up space in the garage. I went into the garage to take some photos of the freezer ready to sell, and (very stupidly) thought I should take a photo with the door open. Well, that's when I smelt it, a pack of 3 month rotting fish fingers! I nearly killed DH! It's a smell I will never, EVER forget!!!

Hmmmm I've got a few

My dog rolled in rotten dead fish....that was not pleasent

My dad used to go fishing.
He left his stinking clothes and dead fish in the boot of the car in the height of summer for about a week. It took a good 6 months for that car to smell right again.

My Dh's feet after a long day at work...

Booboo I used to do a.n. all the time in my shameful, youthful past.

As a student nurse, arrived in theatres for early shift and went to have a look at a specimen from an emergency op during the night that was waiting to go over to the path lab. I opened the lid of a large plastic pot to find about six feet of dead intestines. The poor patient had a blood clot in the artery supplying her bowel and this was the result. I have never, ever in my life, or my long nursing career, smelled anything so vile. It was indescribable.

Dead mouse decomposing under floorboards.

A bag of decomposing hedgehogs awaiting post mortem.

Dead camel on the side of the road in Australia. Some moron wanted to take a picture, the stench as the bus doors opened, uggh.

gangrene. it wasnt an accident. i was a student and was told to get down and sniff the leg so I never forget the smell

i've never forgotton the smell

Oddly enough, the smell of vom makes me...

secrestspy got it down to a mild hum made me chuckle

Dea bird hidden under the bed. Under the bed was used as storage so lots of boxes. Smell got worse and worse as I hunted everywhere else.

In the end I had to take the mattress off and the wooden slats, to discover it. It was becoming liquefied at this point.

(Funnily enough, we are currently suffering from dead bird smell in our house. It's actually the result of a radiator leak which must have been soaking the carpet in the spare room for some time. I have no idea why the wet carpet smells like dead bird, but it does.)

Fish guts. We used to go fishing off the coast of Ireland and catch loads of lovely fish, mainly mackerel. We four kids had to gut and fillet it all when we got back and there was no getting out of it, even for me at just 8 years old. Definitely the most revolting smell I've ever known before or since. The guts had to buried at the vegetable patch (as fertilizer), my sister and I stumbling along with the bucket, retching all the way!