Today's post is both a glimpse into my glamorous weekend and a sneak peek at the newspaper column that will be published on Friday. Enjoy.
***
“Honey, I need you to wake up,” my husband said.
I blinked at the clock. 1:56 a.m.
He repeated, “Honey. There’s something going on. I need you to wake up.”
His voice had a certain urgency that immediately woke me. Something was very wrong.
“What? What is it?” I asked, climbing out of bed and finding my slippers so I could follow him downstairs.
He related the series of events. He had fallen asleep in the den. A gust of wind had blown open the front door, and the three dogs had taken the opportunity to enjoy a little mid-winter’s night romp in the slush and snow. Their playing woke him, and that’s when he noticed a smell.
By the time he got to that part of the story, I was already on the landing, and I could smell it myself. It smelled like a tire fire.
“Is it the furnace?” I asked, suddenly very concerned that our oil-powered boiler was on the verge of explosion.
“No – that’s what’s weird. I already checked in the basement, but I can hardly smell it down there.”
We paced from room to room. To call it an odor is just too feeble. It was a full-body experience. I tasted it, and it seemed to singe the back of my nose and throat.
We searched for the source. While he looked in the basement again, I opened the dishwasher to see if a plastic spoon – no, strike that, a plastic spoon FACTORY had slipped onto the coil and burned. Nothing there, and nothing in the basement.
“Could it be coming from outside?” I asked.
We walked out the garage, and there was definitely more than a trace of whatever it was in the air.
Perhaps, I thought, a neighbor has a secret crystal meth lab that has exploded and poisoned the breeze. Maybe a teenager detonated a stink bomb under our house’s foundation. Maybe it’s Napalm.
We went back into the house and did what any sane person would do during the threat of exploding furnaces or chemical spills. We got on the computer.
It was 2:45 in the morning, and we were Googling.
“Oil Furnace Rubber Smell”
“Oil Furnace Leak Smell”
“Electrical Fire Signs”
“Heating Oil Leak”
“Oil Danger”
It was no use. Nothing we searched for gave us any useful answers. Although I was able to reasonably reassure myself tbat we hadn’t been attacked with Napalm.
We weren’t throwing up or passing out, and neither were the dogs, whom we adore, but to whom we looked at that wee hour as little canaries in the coal mine of our odiferous home.
We were pretty sure it was a leak of some kind. And we became very sure that Nora the Fleet and Brave had gotten herself into whatever it was. We bathed her in dish detergent, just like those poor oil spill ducks in the commercial.
“I know this is going to sound crazy,” my husband said. “But do you think someone may have been trying to steal oil from the pipe outside?”
“Is that even possible?”
“I don’t know.”
A scenario began to form in our minds. Heating oil thieves, driven to crime by the high price of keeping
warm, roam the countryside in the dead of night armed with long hoses and portable oil tanks. When the wind blew open the door and let the dogs out, the thieves were startled and ran away quickly. With Nora the Toothsome at their heels, they shook her off with the only thing they had – a couple splashes of oil.
I know – the logic falls apart. To make their theft worthwhile, the thieves would have to drive an oil truck to collect their loot. A stealth oil truck.
But at 3 a.m., it seemed like a viable theory.
At 8:30 the next morning, when I was sitting in my desk at work, and my colleagues began wondering aloud what the weird smell was, I began to relay the story of the rank oil leak.
“Are you sure it wasn’t a skunk? It smells like a skunk,” she said.
When you Google “oil furnace burning rubber smell,” nothing much comes up. But when you Google “skunk burning rubber smell,” you hit paydirt. You also learn that, if you mishandle those crucial early minutes of a skunking, you could smell to regret it for a long, long time.
Here’s how I figure it happened:
In the dark of night, the wind rushed against the front door, and blew it open. The dogs – always up for a bit of unsupervised playful fun – headed into the snow and slush to play. And that’s when Nora – the fearless, the barksome, the wolflike – spotted the skunk.
Only one question remains: Why was a skunk stealing oil from our furnace?
