By Laurel J. Sweet
The Boston Herald
FIELDS CORNER, Mass. — Residents of a Fields Corner apartment building thought that ghastly odor was a tragic case of “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” and called the cops.
Imagine their relief when they learned it was a matter of “Where’s the beef?” Answer: not in the trash can.
Cops and firefighters broke into an elderly woman’s apartment on Dorchester Avenue to find she wasn’t home but a packet of rotten beef was.
“It was like bad breath everywhere, athlete’s foot and all that,” neighbor Denise Upshaw said.
Turns out the occupant had left hamburger out to thaw in her kitchen and forgot about it.
“No idea how long it had been there,” said Steve MacDonald, spokesman for the Boston Fire Department, which sent firefighters with cast-iron stomachs through a second-story window to corral the corrupt chuck. “We get calls like this all the time, but it’s usually gas.”
Copyright 2010 Boston Herald Inc.