A bad nose breeds fat raccoons

August 22nd, 2007

It has been said, when a person loses one of their five senses, one or more of the other four will compensate for the loss by becoming heightened. This may hold true for a blind person who develops acute hearing or super sensitive fingertips, but when it comes to a sense of smell, the theory begins to stink like a deer camp bunkhouse after bean night.

Recently, I discovered that an old friend of mine has a rather weak sense of smell. You might think it a blessing, because a person like that can walk into any truck stop restroom without fear, burn all the microwave popcorn, or share a long car ride with a wet dog—but not exactly.

The poor guy does have some sense of smell, enough to know when to change his socks, or carry the trash out to the curb, but not enough to develop any superpowers. The best way to test someone’s sense of smell is the old fish in the door trick, which has been a lake lodge favourite for years.

Begin by choosing a victim, preferably one you don’t like, or the person who annoyed everyone all week by accidentally hooking people in the back of the head. Catch a small fish, a sunfish or perch is ideal, and secretly hide it in the pocket at the bottom of the driver’s door in their car. If your victim has a long way to go, or a well developed sniffer, they will usually find it before they arrive home. If not, they are in for a smelly surprise.

Results vary by the individual, but you can usually determine your friend’s sense of smell by the length of time it takes before they phone you up and rhyme off every obscenity they know. When you finish laughing, apologize to the person, and make a mental note to lock your car doors the next time you visit that fishing lodge.

When it comes down to sensory superpowers, my friend does have one gift: the ability to read best before dates. I’ve never seen anything like it. His fridge is crammed with food; deli meats, chicken wings, cheeses, vegetables, breads and rolls, and some thick mystery paste that smells like the entrance of a shopping mall food court. Everything is in its original packaging, and the only way he can tell if the contents have gone bad, or even a little gamey, it to check the best before date on the labels. Anything that gets even close to the due date is watched closely, and once the date on the calendar exceeds the date on the label, into the freezer it goes.

Most people use their freezer to store food, yet his is used to store garbage, where no one is allowed to touch it until it is time to once again take that long walk to the curb. I didn’t have the heart to tell this man that his garbage isn’t garbage, and doesn’t stink, not even to a person with a normal nose.

Best before dates mean simply that, and not “this product turns to poison upon the printed date”. If his nose worked as well as his attention to best before dates, he would be able to sniff out bad food at ten paces, with the fridge door closed. He did try burying old food in the yard, but the local raccoons kept digging it up. Now they don’t even bother. They’re too fat, and prefer to wait at the end of the lane for the next “garbage” day.