Senses Sympathy, Sham

     I am not proud of this and certainly would not attempt to take credit for any remaining aspect of my physical prowess, but I will say that though all my other senses may have declined, I retain one, that being a fairly decent sense of smell. For several weeks, I detected the odor of mildew in the area of the kitchen sink.  I looked beneath but everything was clean and dry.  I went down to the basement and followed the path of the plumbing and the wooden floor beneath where the sink would be.  All looked clear, with no evidence of leakage anywhere.  I poured Clorox into both drains of the sink, followed by boiling water.  I did the same with vinegar.  Each of those treatments took the odor away for only a day or so.  Finally, I researched the Handyman on Google.  He suggested pouring DRANO down the sink, to clear out the trap, he said.  I did so, about 2 weeks ago now, and so far the odor has not returned.  A success story.
    Yesterday morning, as I filled the teakettle, I smelled an unpleasant odor. At first I had the thought, "It's back again."  But almost instantly, my sense of smell registered not mildew, but something else, something dead.  I checked the trap behind the breadbox, which I had set just the day before, after Maybe signaled a mouse might be around, and that I might want to do something about it.  Sure enough, a mouse was in the trap, already starting to reek in the heat of June.  Mildew and dead mice are both bad smells, but they're not the same.  Discerning nostrils know the difference.
     Today I read the unfortunate conclusion to the search for a local woman who has been missing for a month.  Her body was found in  a wooded area near where she was last seen. An extensive search utilizing helicopters and tracking dogs had failed to find her.  The woods were deep and the foliage thick, so the helicopters would have been of little use.  But what about the tracking dogs?  The woman had been depressed, said her family.  She had evidently walked into the woods by herself, on foot. Her scent would have been available as an aid to the dogs.  How could they have missed her?  Decay would have started almost instantly.  I understand carrion dogs are sometime used in such instances.  So, Uncle Tom's Cabin aside, I wonder, how effective are tracking dogs anyway.  Same suspicion would apply to drug-sniffing dogs. The dog handler spies a likely looking subject at a bus station or such, and says, "Hey, Rover, let's go check out that suitcase over there."