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03/22/2004 Entry: "Forensic Analysis: The Pomegranate Affair" I am a pit peeved at the moment. We have a downstairs kitchen which is used primarily for guests (it's part of the huge guest room), and for storage. The fridge and deep freezer in there holds some of our backup food like so many millions of homes across America. We use the fridge part to store beer and alternate drinks (like mixers, gourmet fruit juices, and so on). Sometimes friends leave sodas in there, and so over time, we have collected odd drinks and sodas which sometimes I drink, or the next guest staying there drinks. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine (I forget whom, I am guessing Sawa) left three bottles of pomegranate juice in there. I had never had any, and they were left for my family to try. I have since found out I like pomegranate juice, and by Saturday, I had already drank 2 of the 3 bottles. There was one unopened bottle left in the downstairs fridge before the party, a pomegranate-mango blend, which I saved for later. Tonight, I was changing the sheets on the guest bed, and saw a trail of ants leading to the fridge. I had seen this before, and it was a previous guest who had left an open can of soda. So when I went to the source, I was shocked to find what looked like a pool of blood dribbling from my fridge. I opened the fridge, and gasped at what I saw. It looked like a scene from Pulp Fiction. The fridge was coated with pomegranate juice. In what looked like a ghastly forensic crime scene, the remnants of the bottle lay shattered on the top shelf. Glass shards, blown inwards, coated the top shelf, and splatter patterns of dark red juice marked a large splash point that started at the back of the shelf and coated most of the back wall of the fridge. It looked like the bottle had been struck by a bullet, but there was no exit hole in the back of the fridge, nor did I find a bullet. The front door got very little splatter, indicating the explosion was caused by an object that struck the front of the bottle very hard, sending the debris towards the back of the fridge. The only mess in the front door was a large, probably male hand print, and some evidence that someone tried half-heatedly to wipe some stuff away, but only succeeded in smearing juice in a round pattern. There was also a similar hand print on the sink counter, also with some smears. It took me an hour to clean that damn fridge. The juice had dribbled down all the shelves, pooled in drawers and the tops of cans, gotten into all the cracks of the fridge, and finally leaked onto the floor and under the fridge. I had to carefully mop because there were minute glass shards everywhere. There were only two large pieces: the top of the bottle where the neck meets the cap, and two large pieces of what was once the bottom of the bottle. Maybe it was the dark red color, but the destruction seemed so... violent. I have no idea what caused this, and who tried to clean up. It really looked like the bottle had been struck by a lead-tipped bullet. It's not the loss of the juice that has me upset. It was a gift, and I can pay $4 for another bottle. It wasn't even the mess that was really the issue, it was the fact that someone, someone I knew, probably caused this accident, and when their cleaning effort failed, they didn't tell me. I am curious, among the people who were at my house, who would have such a mind set. Did they think I'd be upset at them for causing an accident? No, I know accidents happen. I am upset they didn't tell me, and thus most of juice had coagulated, stained my floor and fridge, and attracted ants. Had I not been in the guest room and saw the ants by chance, I might not have found out for WEEKS. Problems like these don't go away, they get worse. And harden. And stain things. The person who did this is probably reading my blog. No, I don't want a confession. I don't even want to know who did this because I don't want the burden of being angry at them, and in the grand scheme of things, it's not some really horrible crime, anyway (I'm just pissed right now, and it will pass). I just want them to know, in the future, if you make a huge mess like that at a guest's house? TELL THEM. Tell them immediately. Especially if they have an ant problem.