Actually, I've smelled worse. And it's incredibly cool to look at. This improbable fungus is properly named Clathrus ruber, AKA the red cage fungus, the latticed stinkhorn, or the basket stinkhorn.
Ada found it under a native ribes in the back yard. She was hugely excited, recognizing it from her Smithsonian Natural History. Originally it was Eurasian, we found out, but it has spread with plant introductions pretty much worldwide.
It was American mycologist David Arora who called C. ruber's odor "the vilest of any stinkhorn," apparently. Our only-somewhat-vile-smelling specimen was achieving its desired effect, though. It was heavily mobbed by flies, putting it in something close to fungal heaven, I guess.
There was a dried up sibling nearby as well as a white, polygonal, egg-sized volva, or proto-stinkhorn. According to Wikipedia, the German Mycological Society named C. ruber the 2011 "Mushroom of the Year" and "described the volva as "like an alien from a science fiction horror film"."
Stinkhorns pretty much constitute the Phallaceae family, of course, which raised some quizzical interest in the children. Thankfully, this particular species is not especially phallic, so I felt able to hold off on that teaching moment for another time.