Returning from vacation horror stories - lets hear'em

we left for a 2 week vacation and left dirty dishes in the sink, when we got back the kitchen was filled with fruit flys!!!! I used a can of hair spray and a lighter to make my way to the window so i can let some of them out, my girl friend wouldn't go into the kitchen for a month after that, it was pretty nasty

HoRnYTuRbO wrote in post #4801967
we left for a 2 week vacation and left dirty dishes in the sink, when we got back the kitchen was filled with fruit flys!!!! I used a can of hair spray and a lighter to make my way to the window so i can let some of them out, my girl friend wouldn't go into the kitchen for a month after that, it was pretty nasty

It’s amazing at how fast those little suckers breed.

Robert16 wrote in post #4799264
I heard a story about a guy who had been messing around behind his girlfriends back - long story short, they split up, he goes on holiday to 'find himself', she goes to his house, soaks the carpets and sprinkles grass seed all over the place, weeks later he returns to an indoor lawn.

Now THAT'S funny.

Went out of town for just one night. Came back the next morning and found a broken water pipe in the kitchen. Flooded the kitchen, hall, two bedrooms and part of the living room: Fortunately, my homeowners insurance covered quite a bit of the cost.

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Came back very late one night after spending two weeks on Maui in February to find that the furnace in the house had shut down while we were away. The temperature in the house was about 45 degrees F. We were lucky not to have had any pipes freeze and/or burst along with it. My family of four at the time spent the night in the smallest bedroom in the house with two electric space heaters blasting away. We were extremely fortunate to have been able to find someone who was able to repair the furnace the next day.

On another occasion we had been out of town for the weekend, and returned to a house with no power or heat. The temperature was below 60 F in the house that night, too. All the neighbors were also in the dark. We were trying to find a hotel to stay in, but anything in the area had lost power, too. I was about to pack everybody up and head out to spend the night with family well to the north when the power came back on.

My brother spent a couple of weeks tearing out all the carpeting downstairs in his house and installing a new hardwood floor. Just after finishing, he'd gone away for the weekend and returned to find that his fridge had died, and leaked water all over the brand new floor, warping it beyond repair.

We went on vacation to come back and find our house had been broken into and robbed.... very scary!

gjl711 wrote in post #4716451
This sort of came up in another thread but I think it would be fun to have a thread of it’s own. I’m sure that if I search I would find one, but I’m lazy so I’m starting a new one.

Returning from vacation horror stories. Not the horror stories while your on vacation but that would be a fun thread as well, but the surprises you have upon your return and discover that that on little thing you though you took care of, wasn’t. Pictures of course would add to the experience and I have one to go along with my story which I will post up when I get home from work.

Our worst returning from vacation horror story started the day we left and worked its magic for the nearly three weeks we were gone. One of my boys decided to take a swig of milk probably as the limo was waiting in the driveway and forgot to put the milk back in the fridge. For three weeks the milk sat on the counter. I bet it got hot in there too as it was the middle of July, the air was off, and the house was sealed tight.

We got back from vacation in the late afternoon and as soon as I unlocked the door the smell hit you. It was strong, very very strong. It was sour, dead, and rotten smelling all at the same time. As I entered I saw them, flies, thousands of flies all over the windows trying to get out. It looked like a scene right out of the Amityville Horror as the buzzed from window to window. There were way too many to squash as each window had hundreds.

My wife found the source, the gallon of milk left on the counter ½ filled with maggots and covered in flies. That went right into a plastic bag and just to send them off to wherever flies go, a liberal dose of Raid was squirted into the garbage bag as well. As to the ones flying around, well the most effective way to get those guys was with a shop vac. I just went from window to window vacuuming them up. After about two hours of this they were getting pretty space but even so, we kept a flypaper strip in the kitchen and other rooms for a week and every day there would be a few new ones.

So lets hear your returning from vacation horror stories.

Okay...that's so wrong. I'm not sure I'd ever recover from having maggots (i hate even the word) in the house. aaaaaaaaaarrrrrggghhhh​hhh