Pictures and Words

My name is Peter C. Hayward, and every day, I take a dozen or so photos of the plate of meat that is sitting in my back yard.

Taken from my back door.

“Hmmm,” I thought, when I walked out the back door. “I can’t see the meat as clearly. Maybe the sausages have faded from fire-truck red, to a more natural, meaty colour.”

Oh, how naive I was.

This is what I found when I reached the StinkyPlate:

OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD

Ladies and gentlemen, the meat continues to disappear. I suspected that the Cheerios would be popular, but I didn’t expect to lose a full half of them so quickly. No longer is it a “Wall of Saveloy”, it’s more “A casual grouping of meats”. (Except the one on the right, which has been ostracised.)

What’s more, and I didn’t even notice this until MeatGirl brought it to my attention, another piece of Pork Steak has gone missing as well. Two thirds of the Pork Steak is now gone, half of the sausages, and if you compare photos, you’ll notice that it looks like about half of Dad’s Bolognaise Sauce™ has gone as well.

The Kangaroo Steak remains untouched.

I had a quick look around, to see if any of the missing meat could be found, and soon found this:

Makin' a break for it.

It didn’t actually get that far away:

Clearly more than the Poking Stick is needed to guard the meat at night.

Currently, there are four suspects:

• Cannibal Kate pointed out that the current arrangement of meats is actually much nicer than it was before the meats were taken.  WHAT A SUSPICIOUS OBSERVATION.
• MeatGirl “claims” to be a vegetarian, but I suspect this to be a clever front. She was clearly eyeing off the Cheerios while Cannibal Kate and myself were eating them. ALTERNATIVELY: Being a vegetarian, her body, while sleeping, started craving meat, and she slept-walked out to the back yard, and slept-ate six Cheerios and a piece of 3 day old Pork Steak.
• I, recently, have been completely obsessed with the StinkyPlate. Perhaps in my sleep, this obsession caused me to go out and start wolfing the meats down. NO ONE IS ABOVE SUSPICION.
• I guess it could have been some kind of wild animal or something. Unlikely, but possible.

I have taken a photo of the three most likely suspects. Investigations will continue!

You'll notice that they're all in monochrome, the most suspicious type of chrome.

Up next: Daily check-in!

My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for a bit over 48 hours, a plate of meat has been sitting in my back yard!

Our lawn was mowed today; I can now actually see the meat from my back door.

First things first: loyal commenter “RIUM+” asks:

My mum wants to know if she can have the plate when you’re done with it, if you’ve not got a use for it and if it doesn’t get chipped or damaged. Ironically enough, she wants to hang it on her wall.

She certainly can! I can’t think of a more fitting resting place for the StinkyPlate than a position of honour on someone’s wall.

He also has a suggestion:

I suggest you add some spam to the meat pile! It’d be interesting to see if the spam goes bad at all with all its preservatives, or if any animals/bugs will touch it.

If another one goes missing, I’ll consider it (I was also thinking of adding some bacon) but right now, I’ll just see what happens to the 16 pieces of meat I’m currently watching.

But SPAM will definitely be on the top of the list of possible meats for StinkyPete 2!

As you can see above, my lawn was mowed today. I had to run out and tell the men not to touch the plate of meat I was keeping in the back yard, to simply mow around it. It didn’t phase them at all. (perhaps it’s a common request?)

Far too much of my life is now revolving around this plate of meat – the first thing I did when I got up this morning was go and take a photo of the StinkyPlate.

There were about ten times the number of flies sitting on the bolognaise, but when I stepped closer to take the photo, they all buzzed off. Note to self for tomorrow: use zoom.

As you can see, the spaghetti bolognaise is looking less appealing by the hour. The other two don’t have visual changes that are quite as obvious, but the Kangaroo Steak is slightly darker.

I decided to add a new rating to the daily stats – “Visual Appeal“. Originally I just meant it generally, but MeatGirl pointed out that all the numbers would just stay around the 1-2 mark. The standard was changed, and “Appeal” now means “How appealing each piece of meat would be if I were starving to death.”

I’ll be basing the numbers on the night-time photos, which means that while they’re not covered in insects, they are covered in grass:

As you can see, the meat is now lightly garnished with lawn clippings.

General stats:

Weather – drizzled – it was fairly ordinary all day, light rain just before we took the photos (I temporarily forgot about this, and freaked out at the sight of the sausages sweating.)

Number of meats – 16 – didn’t lose any today!

Stench – 0.2 – that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, we have stench. While my head was down next to the meat for the daily photo, I noticed that I could smell the Cheerios. At this point, they just smell like Cheerios (thus the 0.2) but that’s better than all the other meats put together.
Stench radius – 0.05m – only noticeable with my face right down in the meat. I had a sniff around earlier and couldn’t smell anything – it wasn’t until my face was centimetres away from the sausages that I noticed.

Big ants seem to be the only ones who stay awake at night.

Special thanks to commenter “Ilex Majoru”, who informs me that

most insects and nearly all higher organisms sleep, or in some way rest. It’s still a bit of a mystery where sleep originated from, evolutionarily speaking, and what it’s purpose/s is/are.

Dad always told me that sleep was when the brain recharged its electricity, but he’s not a scientist, and I was about 4 at the time.

Other handy facts that Mr Majoru shared:

• Giraffes only sleep for 1.25 hours/day
• Many giraffes are gay!
• If you find yourself needing less sleep than most people, there is a good chance that you may be a closet homosexual. Or a giraffe.
  

Ilex is a science teacher, so you know that he can be trusted.

Meat stats!

Kangaroo Steak:

Toughness – 9/10 – The Kangaroo Steak has remained exactly as tough as it was yesterday.
Popularity – 2/10 – Two is erring on the side of generosity – I took several photos of the StinkyPlate with insects on, and in one of them it had several flies. It could be that they were just resting there as they took a break from the other meats, but I decided to give Kanga the benefit of the doubt.
Appeal – 7/10 – Our new stat, you must remember that this is appeal if I were starving to death. The Kangaroo meat hasn’t changed at all since I took it out of the freezer, and honestly, that makes it pretty appealing. It hasn’t turned into a goo, or changed colour, or really had any changes, which suggests that it is much less likely to kill me than the others. I like to imagine that the tough outside has protected the still-tender, delicious inside.

Pork Steak:

Toughness – 7.5/10 – this has gone down slightly since yesterday, because when I poked it with the Poking Stick today, it made a slight noise – a little like a meat ping-pong ball hitting a racket. Anything that makes a squishy noise like that is going to lose some toughness points.
Popularity – 3/10 – gone down since yesterday. Just as many ants, but only one fly where yesterday there were several.
Appeal – 6/10 - I think I would eat this. I would cut off the outside bits first, because they’re looking pretty festy, if ants are to be trusted, the inside is still still pretty good.

All of these “appeal” scores are based on me getting to cook the meats first.

Dad’s Spaghetti Bolognaise™:

Toughness – 1/10 – there was actually a tiny bit of resistance today! The outside of the sauce has begun to congeal, and form a slight crust. This is simultaneously exciting and disgusting.
Popularity – 6.5/10 – Even more popular with the flies today than it was yesterday! The bolognaise is by far the most popular meat so far.
Appeal – 4/10 – it would take quite a desperate Peter to eat this. It looks extremely unpleasant.

Wall of Saveloy:

Toughness – 6/10 – if you’ve ever poked a sausage (and who hasn’t?) you’ll understand how difficult it is to rate this one. It’s sort of…springy. Six out of ten.
Popularity – 2/10 – around the same as the Kangaroo Steak. MeatGirl suspects this is due to the red…what is that red stuff, anyway? “Sausage skin”? MeatGirl suspects that this is due to the red skin surrounding the sausage. This may dissolve or rip in the next few days, , revealing the delicious sausage meat underneath and attracting more insects.
Appeal – 10/10 – They look (and smell) exactly the same. If I were starving to death, I would eat these, no question.

While the lawn-mowers were mowing my lawn, I took several photos out of windows. I felt like a stalker.

Tomorrow: More meat missing!