Six days and counting...and the trash continues to pile up in Chicago during this massive trash haulers' strike. Unless you look at the alleys, you might not notice that anything is amiss. Since the weather is cooler, the eau de olde dumpster is much milder than, say, on a 90-degrees-in-the-shade day.

That's where I think the trash haulers got it wrong.

You want leverage, go on strike during the hottest weeks of the year, when the stench of rotting garbage assaults the senses and you need Vicks Vaporub™ under your nostrils - or some orange peels tied to your face - to get through the alleys.

On an August day, a ripe Chicago dumpster can smell like a combination of roasted dog droppings, beer belches, a bloated corpse and a vat of fermenting fruit - not necesarily in that order.

You'll hold Chicago's collective olfactory bulbs hostage, and get the City to cry "uncle" in the shortest span of time that way. They'll pay anything to get rid of the smell.

From USA Today:

"Dale Galassie of the suburban Lake County (Ill.) Health Department says,'...if you leave your garbage out overnight, particularly with chicken or fish in it, you immediately get raccoons,' Galassie said."

Let them eat ribs, I say. Then you get rats.

Or, as they say, something stinks at Wrigley Field - but this time it ain't the Cubs.

---