C:The Nose Knows

The last four or five days my son and I have been smelling a strange odor in our house. It comes and it goes. Sometimes I smell it in my bedroom, other times its in the den. Actually, we have smelled it in all parts of the house, except not at the same time. It "floats" around and some times we can't find it at all.

The worrisome part of this is that it smells "mechanical." You know how your vacuum cleaner smells when you've jammed it or the belt is loose--like a burning motor? Well it's sort of like that, only not exactly. My son, too, described it as "mechanical" without my prompting.

So, we've been in all areas of the house, in all the attic compartments, outside, sitting next to the heater. We have tried everything we know. We have tried sniffing while the heater is off; and we--for sure--sniff around while the heater is on. This seems to make no difference.

You need to remember that I am newly-single. Thus, I am probably overly-nervous about the unfamiliar territory of the mechanical part of the house. You know, the regions where only the male members of the family used to dominate (big mistake, ladies, to allow this to happen, as I now know in hindsight).

I told my son yesterday that I'm calling our heater guy. I can't pinpoint that it's the heater, but I sure am afraid of coming home and finding the house in ashes or, worse yet, waking to flames.

And then there was a break in the case! Yesterday my son and I settled down to watch a little television in the den. My shetland sheepdog, Scout, hopped up on the couch beside me and snuggled in.

"Whew!" I jumped up. "Come and sniff this dog!" I commanded my son.

And, when he did, he exclaimed, "It's the mysterious smell!"

THE CULPRIT (mug shot):

Obviously Scout had been curled up underneath something mechanical--perhaps the tractor or the riding lawn mower, who knows. But she has the distinct smell of diesel and motor oil. It was, most definitely, our "mysterious" smell.

We have laughed so hard about this. When we have been all over the house in search of the smell, Scout has been right there with us, every step of the way offering her help. And, now that we think about it, most of hte time we have not been able to smell it was during the day, when Scout was outside.

"No wonder it moved around," my son said. "It went with Scout!"

We are relieve and amused, all at once, and Scout is clean for now...until she goes right back to wherever she got that smell to begin with! I think it means more regular bathing of Scout, which she won't like!