Noxious Fumes

I will describe my weekend with my girlfriend Daniela as soon as I can get my laptop at home to reconnect to the internet, in which case I can upload a few pix from our Grrrls Adventure onto the blog. But, in the meantime, just to keep folks a wee bit entertained, I thought I'd blog about the events of last night.

I got home from a relatively quickly-passing day at work to the distinct smell of foulness emanating from somewhere in the house. My first thought was that Kika had laid a dump and not followed it up with her customary ritual of eating it afterward. I was so overwhelmed by the stink that I immediately took her outside to do her business, gulping some fresh air down before I had to re-enter the house and deal with the funk. Once inside, the noxious smell once again filled my nostrils and I quickly canvassed the house, desperately looking for the source of the offending odor. Nothing. I finally found a small puddle of urine where Kiks had relieved herself at some point during my workday, but after cleaning it up, I realized the foul odor was stronger than ever. Where was it coming from??? I checked the kitchen garbage, hoping I'd thrown something away that could quickly be tied up and thrown outside, but the garbage was no more offensive than usual. My thoughts drifted to other possibilities, including the least of which I wanted to deal with--a dead animal. With Greg House living with us, we didn't have sign of even one mouse this past winter (highly unusual for our almost 100-year old house, and the first time we haven't had a mouse in the seven years we've lived there). So, maybe he'd gotten a mouse but hadn't fully consumed it; thoughts of mutilated, half-chawed mouse remains scattered throughout my house filled my head.

I didn't have much time to give it too much thought as I had to leave for my yoga class. I had hopes that the smell would have dissipated by the time I came back home. No such luck; two and half hours later, the stench was strong as ever. I was still stumped by what could have caused it, but at 9:30 at night, too tired to give much care to it. I settled onto the couch to talk to Ads for a few moments before tuning into my Monday night junk food tv--"Medium." Kika was by my side, curled up in a tight ball, sleeping peacefully, while Greg House sat on the opposite couch, licking himself and finally settling into a peaceful slumber. All was well until a sudden waft of offensive odor penetrated my nostrils. It was like a ramped-up version of what I'd been smelling all evening. I sat up--what the...? I realized Kika was letting loose some farts that would have cracked the fault line wide open. And she didn't stop. And she was cracking them in her sleep! Could it be that it was Kika's farts I'd been smelling in the house the whole time? No eleven pound dog could really stink up an entire house that badly, could she?

I woke up this morning to the same smell in the house, just to a lesser degree. Kika had been in bed with me all night, but I didn't notice any dutch oven effects during the night, so I have no idea what's going on. Maybe I'd better start sniffing around Greg House...