Not that freezer!!!
Several years ago, while I was still working with Search & Rescue dogs, we had a house guest stay with us for a while. Now, this young man was very shy and it took me about a week to get him to really even talk to me. So, just as he was getting comfortable with making simple requests, such as what he might like for lunch, we had a bit of a set back.
He was rummaging through the freezer one afternoon and pulled out what appeared to be a roast. In reality, he had looked in the wrong freezer. I have two, especially since one is used for holding cadaver parts that had been donated to the Search & Rescue team that I was running at the time. I stood there with an amused look on my face, trying hard not to laugh, and asked his to put the "roast" back. "Seriously," he said "I'm really hungry and don't mind waiting for you to cook this." "You really don't want me to cook that," I answered. "Really, I do... I like the way you cook..." he said with an innocent smile. "Trust me, " I said, "you really don't want that." "Why," he asked with a very puzzled look on his face. "Well," I said, "if you look just past the outer plastic layer, you'll see that there is a clearly marked 'Biohazard' bag underneath." He quickly began unwrapping the outer layer. When he saw that there really was a 'Biohazard' bag underneath he turned quite pale and looked at me - a little green around the gills.
"What's in here, exactly, that you would need to wrap it in a bag marked 'Biohazard', he asked. His pale face telling me that he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer. "Well," I began in an amused tone, "you know that we train Search & Rescue dogs, right?" "Yes," he said slowly. "And we train cadaver dogs as well, " I continued. He just shook his head 'yes' slowly. "What do you think we use to train the dogs with?" I asked him. At that his eyes grew big as saucers and he whispered, "what is this?" Still holding the bag in his hand, I smiled wickedly, enjoying the poor boys discomfort a bit too much. "Well that, I believe, is a donated placenta," I answered as I walked over to him and looked inside of the bag. "Yup, that's the placenta." He shrieked loudly, dropped the parcel back into the open freezer and ran down the hallway to his room.
I didn't see the poor boy for several days. Of course, he never went rummaging around in any of my freezers after that. Every now and then I still tease him - gently - of the incident. He's even learned to laugh about it - sort of.
