The Nose Knows, But Mommy Doesn’t
Dogs believe what their noses tell them without question. If the nose says so, it’s so. This conviction isn’t the pseudo-virtue faith; it’s based on a solid foundation of practical experience. The nose has proved unfailingly reliable throughout their lives. Mommy was all for throwing away that box that the new retractable leash had come in, but the nose insisted there was DEAD ANIMAL in the box, so Sunny also insisted and would not be dissuaded that there was something of profound interest in the box. Sure enough, when finally driven frantic by woofy pestiness to explore the matter by sorting through the enclosed advertisements, the Aspie had to concede that there was a small amount of human-quality freeze-dried beef in a small resealable plastic bag—in short, DEAD ANIMAL—and that it was intended for woofy consumption. He trusted his nose and got yummy dead cow. Go ahead, try and find an inducement not to trust his nose that will beat that!
Another time, back when I was still working at The Evil Place, it was the winter holidays, and business associates were sending mountains of food on a daily basis. I secured some pieces of sausage and ham into one of the plastic bags which (as a dog guardian) I am always supplied with, and put the bag in my coat pocket, to take home to my woofus.
I gave him one piece right when I got home, much to his surprise and doggie delight. Spaniels were originally bred precisely for wiggle (through brush and hedges), and Sunny gave me a demonstration out of sheer glee. I put the baggie in my pocket to take on our walk—in thaws there’s always lots of loathsome stuff revealed that he considers edible, and it’s nice to have something truly edible with which to entice him away. It was too warm out, though, for my gloves, and so I decided to put them in the pocket, too (I only had one pocket at the time—the other had had a hole in it for years). Sunny was the full length of his long leash away and deeply intent on chewing on a stick as I tried to fit my gloves in my pocket. Almost, but not quite. There were a couple baggies in my pocket, one holding lotioned tissues, the other the meat, each of which had a lot of air in them. If I squooshed the air out of both, everything would probably fit.
I removed the air from the packet of tissues, Sunny still engrossed in his DR Chipper impersonation. I had barely opened the baggie with the meat in it to let the air out when Sunny was bouncing at my feet and wagging his tail, now intent on convincing me that he was the cutest woofus ever and deserved all the yummy things in that bag, right now! I didn’t even know he was moving until he was there. He was chewing the stick when I was positioning the meat bag for opening, and less than a heartbeat after it was open, the air in it still in the process of being squooshed, his nose had told him from 26 feet away that there were DEAD ANIMAL parts to be had and he had crossed those 26 feet to have them.
So I have learned, through such events, that Sunny’s trust in his nose is justified. When he tells me that his nose detects Something Important, I believe him and don’t give him lectures on how he is pestering Mommy. The only problem is, of course, that this still leaves me without knowledge of what the Something Important is. Primates are comparatively underendowed with olfactory abilities, and I trail the pack. Most of the time, when someone comments on a smell, I just look at them blankly. For instance, I once asked to be allowed to go home from work because I felt woozy and sick, and my supervisor said that another of my co-workers had already left because of the paint fumes. It was news to me that there were paint fumes around the place; I only felt them, not smelled them.
Sunny, of course, thinks Mommy is all-powerful—he’s sure someday I’ll stop the rain for him if he just asks cutely enough (five years he’s been doing that, and I still haven’t convinced him it’s not in the repertoire). Just as suredly Mommy will Do Something about The Smell that he has been so assiduously studying and reporting to her about for the past few weeks. He now has other sites to show me, in addition to the one in the downstairs lobby and the one in the bathroom. He has taken me to the spot in front of the balcony door. He has taken me to the basement door on the other side of our house. He’s tried to take me around on our side of the house, but the ground’s uneven and I won’t do it. He has taken me to these places with his best “I’m Lassie—follow me to Timmy!” behavior, demonstrated the significance of the location’s smell with ostentatious snuffling and pushing with his nose, and then turned to me, all confident smiles and wags that now, at long last, Mommy will Do Something about It. Proving once again that faith is a bad thing. Based only on his high opinion of me in my capacity as Treat Giver, Tummy Rubber, and Protector from Fearsome BOOM! Monsters, he thinks I can Do Something about a smell I can’t detect.
This isn’t to say that I haven’t given thought to the matter. I thought perhaps that we might have a rodently visitor in the bathroom, and I put down the humane trap that captured all those cute deer mice that got in through a broken window one winter. Not a single mously turned up in the trap. I have consulted my landlord, but the water testing in the basement only took place over a couple of days, and Sunny has been at this weeks now.
There is the possibility that the hog-nosed skunk who took up residence in our building’s basement during the winter of 2005-06 has come back. I haven’t seen, heard, or smelled said skunk, however, and that one was was much less stealthy than I would expect a wild creature to be, being seen, heard, and smelled plenty by me and the neighboring humans on either side of the winter in question. (They were all for killing the skunk, although they could cite no aggressive or harmful actions on the skunk’s part, even the smell apparently not being directed at a human or a cat or a dog. The neighbors were in fact surprised that I didn’t consider merely being a skunk a capital offense.) Also against the skunk theory is that Sunny never acted this way when the skunk was unquestionably in residence; his previous unpleasant experience with a skunk was on a walk, not at home. The only sure way to test the theory, though, would be to take Sunny down and see if he could locate the source of The Smell in the basement, and a positive result would be highly unpleasant to me, Sunny, and the skunk. Sunny would be relieved of his desire to have me Do Something, but that’s a small plus in the face of such disadvantages, and I doubt even Sunny would vote for it if he could have the situation explained to him. Besides which, what’s with the sniffing by the balcony door if it’s the skunk? A skunk couldn’t climb up onto the balcony. Since the landlord cut back the branches of the tree, a raccoon couldn’t climb up onto the balcony.
I am running out of ideas. I’m no longer worried that Sunny smells a crack in the pipe in the bathroom, what with his having added other locations to his list, but I’m no closer to relieving his woofy mind. Perhaps he will eventually become accustomed to The Smell and stop telling me about it. Perhaps The Smell will go away. Although he is less intent on each individual site than he originally was with the first two, he attends them in turn with devoted regularity, declaring to any monkeys who will listen that there is Something Important going on.
If only to assure him that I am listening and taking him seriously, I wish I could figure out what has got him on alert.