Super Smellers – Skunks and Beyond

“Can’t you smell that?” For years my wife as astounded me with some of the things she says and asks. “uhhh, No,” I usually respond if I respond at all. She could be talking about the kitchen garbage container . . . or something outside . . . or even as we are driving somewhere. “Maybe there’s a skunk,” she’ll say. I shrug my shoulders. Sometimes she make me get up out of bed, go to the window and look around. Of course I see, hear, and smell nothing.

A few months ago I came home after dark. As I drove down the driveway, my headlights picked up an animal under the hedge. It scurried off across the yard. It was a skunk. I owed my wife an apology . . . several. I should have known. Women smell better than men.

Most of us have heard about dogs sniffing out drugs in smuggling attempts. And K-9 corps for our service personnel can smell out explosives and the enemy. I had also heard about dogs being able to detect cancer in individuals. Apparently, this uncanny ability is not just a doggy ability.

” . . .a 65-year-old retired Scottish nurse named Joy Milne created a media frenzy when she was seemingly able to diagnose Parkinson’s disease using her sense of smell even earlier than scientists could diagnose it with regular medical technology. Milne’s gift apparently manifested several years ago, when she started smelling a strange, musky odor coming from her husband, which she initially dismissed as the normal stench of an overworked man. But after doctors diagnosed Milne’s husband with Parkinson’s disease years later and she started to attend meetings with Parkinson’s patients, she noticed the same odor wafting off of others afflicted with the disease. When she mentioned her observation in passing to a cadre of scientists, they decided to put her ability to the test, giving Milne six shirts worn by Parkinson’s patients and six by healthy individuals. Amazingly, she managed to smell a correct diagnosis (they thought) in 11 of 12 cases—though even the one false positive she’d made came from a man who manifested Parkinson’s eight months after the small-scale test.” – www.good.is/articles/smell-diagnosis-supersmellers-disease-parkinsons-joy-milne

I think Peg’s sense of smell has changed. Years ago on my one trip to New York City I returned home with a bottle of Chanel No. 5 for her. I was a hero. But over the years I think she got more sensitive. She has asthma and allergies. Smells and scents had to go. She gave up perfume and I had to stop using aftershave lotion. We also use unscented soap and shampoo. I can’t give her flowers or even candles. So, I’m left taking out the garbage when she complains and yelling “boo” out the window when she smells a skunk. I do what I can, but I worry about the day she starts sniffing around me and suggest I go in for good check up.