Pictures and Words

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the next 23 days, I shall be watching two plates of meat as they slowly decompose in my back yard.

It begins.

For those who are new – last week, the first week of January, 2009, I put a plate of meat in my back yard, took photos of it every day, and called it the StinkyPete Project (now retronamed “StinkyPete 1.0″)

The meat was stolen. All of it, except for a single piece of Kangaroo Steak. I kept putting meat out, and it kept getting stolen. I eventually set up a video camera and discovered which animal was responsible!

I had originally put out 5 pieces of meat – as I put more out, the meat-count got as high as 16, but after everything was stolen, I decided to throw the whole project out, and start again, learning from my mistakes. This time, I have a cage.

Meet the StinkyCage.

Ladies and gentlemen, the StinkyCage. This cage once held guineapigs; for the next 24 days, it will hold two StinkyPlates, protect them from animals, but still let the insects in. What’s more, my head fits through the door. (just)

Meet the Meat:

From left to right: A packet of Cheerios, a can of SPAM, two pieces of Kangaroo Steak, a container of my Dad's Bolognaise Sauce, and three pieces of Porterhouse Pork Steak

This experiment, in case it isn’t obvious, is for science. As such, I’ve been thoroughly documenting every step of the process. Below are the costs of each of the meats, the taste ratings out of ten, the ratings as a meal, and ratings as a steak*.
*The meats that are actually steaks did better than the meats that are not actually steaks, but not much.

The Original Meats on the left plate, the two Latecomers on the right.

As there’s far too much meat to hold on one plate, StinkyPete 1.5 has two. I’ve decided to give them each a name – the plate on the right shall be “Fort SPAM”, with the mighty can of SPAM in the middle, surrounded by the Wall of Saveloy, but I don’t have a name for the plate on the right. Any suggestions? (leave them in the comments, or you can email me directly)

As in StinkyPete 1.0, I’ll be keeping track of the weather, rating the stench coming from the StinkyCage, and (as the project goes on and the smell hopefully increases) the radius of the smell. I’ll also be rating each individual meat based on toughness (determined by poking it with the Poking Stick), appeal (if I were starving to death, how appealing would each one be) and popularity (at some during daylight hours, I’ll go out and take a photo of the StinkyPlates; this number will be based on how many insects are interested in each meat.)

Any reaction from neighbours, landlords, local council, the police etc etc will be documented. My current plan is to deny any knowledge of the situation, but the obviousness of the cage might make it sound a little less than believable.

The meat was placed at exactly midnight, Brisbane local time. (I live in Brisbane, Queensland, in the fictional suburb of Medford.) Each of the meats are straight out of the freezer. I poked them all, and they’re all pretty solid, except the SPAM. Even when frozen almost-solid, you can still smell the SPAM – 0.5/10 for stench, with a radius of about 20cm. By my count, there are 19 pieces of meat – 1 can of SPAM, 12 sausages, 1 bowl of bolognaise sauce, 3 pork steaks, and 2 kangaroo steaks.

For every day of StinkyPete 1.0, I took a photo of my head next to the plate of meat. For StinkyPete 1.5, I’m going to take it one step further – I am going to see how many days I can stand to physically put my head inside the cage, and take a photo. I’d be surprised if I make it past three.

The cage should keep animals out – mice and rats may still be able to gain access, but if they start to get in and meat starts going missing, I have bought a roll of chickenwire to wrap around the cage. The cage door has a lock, which I was actually quite impressed by:

After locking the cage door, I took a large piece of metal and put it in front of it. (yes, I'm a bit paranoid...but I did lose 18 pieces of meat in 6 days last time.)

So thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy StinkyPete 1.5! I hope to update about once a day, more than that if anything interesting happens, but I can’t imagine we’ll have the meat stolen every few minutes like yesterday, so it should be a lot quieter experiment this time around.

Tomorrow: The first daily check-in!