Shrooms
Hello. At 4:09 a.m. last night, Rachel woke me up. Her head was basically buried in Lexi’s rump. Lexi’s body had migrated overnight to become Rachel’s pillow. Lexi is a four year old hound dog.
Rachel had an observation she felt she had to make at 4:09 a.m., which is why she woke me
“Lexi,” she said, “smells like cooked mushrooms.”
“What?” I implied, barely awake.
“Sauteed,” Rachel said, “with a little butter. Not too much.”
If you know hound dogs, you know they have a distinctive odor. It’s interesting. Complex. But I’ve never heard it summarized so brilliantly.
And then Rachel elaborated.
“It’s umami.”
Yes, it is! Rich, like a bouillabaisse.
This is one of many reasons I love this woman. She is a brilliant writer and observer and really funny. And the concept of dogs, reduced to sacs of meat, is great.
Rachel and I are driving today on a long, complex car ride, which is why this is a short post. I will be back next week. Pat Myers will be handling the Invitational, brilliantly, as always, on Thursday. Pat doesn’t actually need me. I’m not sure she even likes me. But we are intertwined forever.
Here is a picture of Lexi, who smells exactly like cooked mushrooms.
Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:
I’m certain people here are familiar with the phenomenon of Frito feet.
We used to have a dog who was a schmuck. She ran free, as dogs usually did in those days, on our rarely-used side street. When a car would come down the road, she would run at full speed and dive under the car, spinning like a top, being tossed beneath the car and spit out at the rear of the car, much to the dismay of the terrified driver of the car. She would get up, dust herself off, and stumble to the curb, waiting the next unfortunate driver to terrorize. Why did our dog, Mini (short for tongue in cheek name Minerva, The Goddess of Wisdom), do this to cars? She loved the spinning and flying around. If we took her in the car somewhere, she would stick her head out the window until she toppled over onto the asphalt, so we never took her in the car except to the vet, and then only if someone was there to hold her. She did not die from the hurling and spinning under cars. Cancer got her at somewhere in her late teens. I loved the dog - she looked like the movie dog Benji - but she was a schmuck.