Brent Reed quit selling insurance a few years ago, tired of convincing people they needed his services.
Today he solves odor mysteries, and there’s little doubt his clients appreciate him now.
“Usually when people call, they want me right away and they’re real happy to see me,” said Reed, owner of Odor Control Service.
For the past two years, Reed, 30, has removed some pretty horrendous smells from homes and offices in the Puget Sound area.
Lately, Reed’s business–which includes himself, his dog and a part-time worker–has been busier than usual.
The summer heat has brought in a higher-than-average number of pleas for help. High temperatures make certain things stink faster, Reed said.
Often the culprit is an animal, perhaps a rat or raccoon, that has crawled under a building and died.
Other times, it’s the family cat that tinkled on the rug and couch, or perhaps it’s the house saturated in cigarette smoke.
Then there’s the unfortunate task of cleaning up after a person has died and gone unnoticed for a few days or even weeks.
“My wife and I never talk about my work at dinner time. It’s pretty hard to stomach,” said Reed, who enjoys sailing among fresh breezes when not fighting foul odors.
Recent jobs included a house filled with cat feces and an apartment unit where an elderly man died and wasn’t discovered for five days.
With more heat expected, Reed suspects his phone lines will warm up, too.
“It doesn’t take long for something dead to smell up the whole house when it’s hot,” Reed said.
Reed’s job is simple in theory. Find the source, remove it and neutralize the odor with sprays and chemicals.
Recently, Reed went to Nancy Evans’ house in Auburn, Wash., to investigate the case of the smelly dead rats.
Evans put out rat poison a week earlier, after hearing that unmistakable scratching sound under her dishwasher.
Soon, the scratching stopped but the odor began. The stench wafted from the crawl space into her kitchen, bathroom and laundry room.
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Fearing hotter temperatures ahead, she called Reed.
Reed put on thick blue coveralls and a mask, and lowered himself slowly into the crawl space. With a flashlight in hand and his dog, Amber, by his side, he wormed his way around the darkness.
Amber, a Beagle-mix Reed picked up from the Humane Society, has a superb nose and runs to the smelliest thing she can find.
After 20 minutes, Reed, drenched in sweat, and Amber, panting, emerged victorious, having found three dead rats.
The rats were placed in individual plastic bags and tied together like a string of trophy trout.
Evans wrote a check for $100, and both parties appeared content.
There are only a handful of odor specialists such as Reed in the Puget Sound area.
“I’ve always enjoyed doing things that were unique, and I like the attention, too,” said Reed.
Whenever he tells people about his work, there’s immediate interest, he said.
So far, the work has provided Reed with a decent living. But he hopes for more.
One day, he wants to set up a network of odor specialists around the nation.
Then Reed hopes to move from crawl spaces to the executive office, adding, “I’d rather teach people how to do this than actually do it myself.”