Singapore Chilly Crab

I'm not referring to the crab you eat at No Signboard or Jumbo Restaurant.

I'm talking about the crab I found on top of the aircon outside our condo!!!

It was December 25 then, no work, so I decided to clean the house and do some laundry.

When I got out of my room, there's this stench - fishy and gross-smelling.

So I sniffed around (like a dog), first I went to the kitchen, and then to my toilet but I just couldn't locate where the smell was coming from.

Okay, never mind the smell. I was going to do my laundry so I pulled the dry floor mats off

the laundry hanger. Waaaaaah! I was so shocked when I pulled one down and saw a crab on top of the aircon. There are two aircons outside our condo by the laundry area- ours and our neighbour's. The crab was on our neighbours.

Weird, a crab on top of the aircon. I was thinking maybe they wanted to dry out the crab before they cook it or something...(but eeeew it was really smelly)

------ The days passed--------

Everyday I would go out and see if the crab was still there. And it always was. The bad thing was, the smell kept getting worse.

I didn't want to touch it though, so I would just cover my nose every time the wind blew and the smell intensified.

On the morning of December 30, it rained really hard. When I opened my room, I was greeted by a gagging smell so overpowering that I almost doubled over. The rainwater has drenched the insides of the crab (which was already rotten to begin with) and it created this deadly fume.

I had no choice but to let it pass because I was already late for work. I planned to take care of it when I go home that night.

-----Night came and it was time to face the crab --------

I had dinner with my friend and mom and sister who were visiting from Manila. Guess what we

had for dinner? No Signboard Chili Crab! It was yummy, but I guess I didn't enjoy it fully because the smell of the crab kept coming back to me.

With resignation, I went home and decided to throw out the damn crab and get it over with once and for all. The smell was overpowering, covering the whole house.

I pondered on how to go about it. I didn't want to touch it with my hands, so I used 2 dustpans and tried to move it. Since the aircon was higher, I pushed the crab until it dropped on to our aircon (which is on a lower level). Eeeeeew! The shell was already soft. Sob! Why oh why do I have the good fortune to be doing this all alone? Just when my flatmates have gone back to Manila for their vacation.

I pushed the crab to one dustpan and directly threw it out the metal trash compartment (the trash goes straight to the condo trash bin). Bleeech! The black juice from the crab has dripped onto our aircon.

I poured some water with alcohol on the aircon. There's no way that I'm going to scrub it.

That done, I decided to relax a bit in my room. A few minutes after, I went out again and was upset that it was still so stinky. The juice (and smell) has stuck to the aircon.

I poured water over and over until the juice washed away from it.

Man, it took a few hours before the smell finally disappeared.

When I woke up the next day, I was so happy that the stench was gone.

A couple of days have passed, but sometimes I can still smell the crab. Eeeew! I don't think I'll ever look at crabs the same way again.