A Tale of Two Smells

I am sure everybody has an experience of wondering what that odor they smell is, and from where it is coming. Smell is one of the five senses, and what we smell we can find invigorating, pleasant, or down right disgusting to the point, well, you want to perhaps puke. I recall once being at a football game at UW-Whitewater, while in college, and the person behind me was drunk and ended up throwing up on me. I almost had to throw up with the stench. Luckily my dorm room was not too far. There are also odors that we experience, and we probably know the source. My wife likes to eat stuff that leaves an odor. 

Source: Google images

Sometimes for lunch my wife will make tuna salad. Unlike Marie Barone, I think she makes sure to put celery in her tuna salad. There was a different Everybody Loves Raymond episode that centered on a new fangled can opener, and Ray could not get it to work right while he was opening a can of tuna and the tuna and juice fell all over the place. My wife may not spill tuna juice, but the odor gets to me. Think about the tuna container, one of those bags, not a can, and that goes in the trash. Well, unless the trash is taken out that day it will smell and smell. It was worse every time I opened the door under the sink. There was plenty of room left so I did not bother to take it out. We use bags from grocery shopping, or other places, and since we often take our own bags we can get in short supply of the bag to line the trash can. Nonetheless the smell was rather disgusting. Perhaps not as bad as that guy who threw up on me in the 1970's. 

I could also smell it when I would open the dishwasher which contained dirty dishes. I am not sure if there is a food smell worse than tuna, except for perhaps uncooked poultry packaging in the garbage. I don't even think herring, or even sauerkraut, other two likes of hers, smell as bad as tuna waste. I suppose in Raymond's house, given Debra's level of housekeeping the tuna smell stuck around awhile until Marie came over to do a deep clean. In our house, I think of the poor cupboards that have to be with the tuna smell all day before the trash is emptied. Of course, then it moves to the trash container where it can ferment even further until the weekly pickup arrives.

Everybody Love's Raymond 
Dialogue on Tuna Salad
Source: Google

In my mind, however, this pales in comparison to the dog s$#t smell I come across in autumn. When I could walk, my daily walk took me past the house, and for a few weeks I thought that the homeowner should pick up their doggy do. After a while, it occurred to me that it was not dog s$#t, but the fallen leaves of a gingko tree. Since I cannot walk, my daily bike ride route takes me past the tree not once, but twice. If there ever was a way to ruin a pleasant bike ride, it is the dog-s$#t tree. One could not even enjoy its yellow fall color because you just want to get past. Even though it is outside, and the wind is blowing the stink is still terrible. The homeowners seldom pick up their leaves, and if they do it is at the end of the season. Perhaps they don't have the sense of smell I have, they are used to it, or they stay inside, but man, I can not figure out why they don't pick them up and take them to the village drop-off site. Maybe, just maybe, they too find the smell overwhelming and do not wish to pick them up. Just the other day, with a strong wind, I was biking and could smell it a block or more away. I would have thought the wind would better dissipate the smell, but it was still strong. 

Smelly Tree and its downed Leaves
Photo by author 11/9/2022, still smells

This is a good reason to never plant a ginkgo tree. Even if the fetid odor is only present when the leaves fall, I still would not plant that tree. I don't know what else it could be. This is the only thing that seems to correlate. Just typing this, my nostrils are flaring with the imagined disgusting smell. I have now come to call that large gingko tree the dog s$#t tree. A very fitting name. The odd thing is, the reek is just as bad in cooler as warmer temperatures. I have to suffer through that smell, as I do the tuna smell that emanates from the garbage. Of course, my wife would tell me to suck it up.