When New Orleanians returned to their homes after the Storm they were struck by a smell that has no equivalent in recent American history: a stupefying blend of decaying animal flesh as layered as the city’s history. The sweet rankness of animal and human death floated around the city like it might have in the aftermath of a Yellow Fever epidemic of the 18th century, but added to it was the putrid efflorescence of 20th century grocery store meat blossoming inside thousands of refrigerators. For a week or so after the Storm, when the city wallowed in its filth and misery without help from the United States of America, which they had mistakenly believed they were part of, people helped each other drag the taped-up fridges unto the street. Rows and rows of white metal boxes cradling inside generations of maggots began to fill the narrow streets of America’s oldest city.
