The Power of Dooky
Okay, the photo here is NOT dooky but that lumpy dooky-looking labdanum I got a few months back, but it helps to illustrate the point of the post.For days now I've been picking up the scent of, well, pooh. Wasn't the litter box, wasn't my shoes or the slips or the Uggs -- I just couldn't figure out why every so often I'd get this weird waft of doo-doo while sitting at the new computer desk. So I went on a hunt -- a poop hunt -- and found tucked under the sewing box next to the printer a pair of my son's "playin' shoes" with a minuscule trace of something he stepped in trapped in the tread. I mean, it was like dust it was so small, but it threw off a stench that my nose grabbed up nearly every time I sat at the computer to work. The shoes were hastily flung onto the porch for an outdoor scrubbing.
It really brought home the power of dooky that even in its tiniest measure it packs an olfactory wallop that'll make you tear your house apart to find it. And it reminded me that some NBP'ers use civet, the King of Crap Smells, in their perfumes, in ALL their perfumes, to stretch the skin time and to deepen the scent. Civet paste isn't pooh, per se, but it adds quite a bit of the pooh punch to the cat's -- ugh -- real pooh. Personally, I find it offensive. And I can pretty much pick it out of a perfume in its dry down.
Of course, I'm also the girl who likes hyracium and horse chestnut evulsions.
It's funny you mention this... I can smell trace amounts of skat wherever I am, too. It's like my nose has radar.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar experience looking for what I assumed was a protest poo in my office (Lucy gets in a mood sometimes), but no, it was a vial of civet that a soaper sent me awhile back in the spirit of "I found this and it totally smells like arse, do you have any use for it?" Ugh. Museum piece it is. It smelled like rotting poo, when the bacteria that have that serious halitosis-like twang to them overwhelm a piece of organic material.
Hyraceum doesn't bother me much by comparison. Castoreum doesn't either, but just begs the question of why someone ever thought it'd be a great idea to harvest these sacs from a beaver's backside. I mean can you just see that on a label or in someone advertising copy? "And now, we bring you the sumptuous rich florals of France, punctuated with the furry pungent backside of the Canadian beaver..."
NO!!! Not the backside! Anything but the backside!!