The Devil's Tongue
This song might come to mind:
Now on display in the Liniean House at the Botanical Gardens is the Devil's Tongue, the 'little brother' of the huge Corpse Flower (scientific name: Amorphophallus titanum, translated, means "Giant Misshaped Penis")
The 'Devil's Tongue's botanical name is "Amorphophallus paeoniifolius" - translated, it is "Misshaped Penis Elephant Foot" !!!
(The bright yellow 'stem' of the flower IS the actual flowers of this plant, which are actually very tiny, yellow flowers for such a huge, smelly - interesting - plant.
A friend asked me, "I have to ask; what do they smell like? Are they floral at all?"
My answer - characteristically lengthy, of course!:
Floral? Nope. More like something from The Bog of Eternal Stench (from the David Bowie movie "The Labyrinth" !)
I never got a whiff of THIS one, because it was freshly open.
Having had maggots eat half of my right foot off then I was 4 yrs. old, I can tell you that, if you are standing down-wind of the Devil's Tongue's cousin, "The Corpse Flower", the odor - and TRUE odor - smells like rotten, dead flesh. Much like the same smell as if you pass road kill that has been on the road for several days. There is a difference between road kill that is STARTING to smell, and one that has had a chance to cook in the sun for a few days.
If I had to make a choice, I would rather smell the one that has cooked a bit longer than one that is freshly rotten. The 'freshly rotten' smell is much more acidic, and stomach-turning for a good reason.
Mother Nature made us revolt - actually get nauseous - at the smell of rotten food to keep us from eating bad things that would make us sick.
I had a BIG, BUTCH nurses's aide that worked under me when I worked as a nurse.
I was in a double patient's room, cleaning up a lady that, well, made 'the mess of the century'.
The privacy curtain was pulled around her for obvious reasons.
This big, butch, straight man cam in to care for the non-messed lady, and suddenly, I heard him yell to her, "I'll be right back!", as he bolted for the door. Then, I heard horrible vomiting noises coming from the hallway.
Bud came back into the room, and apologized to both me and the patient he was caring for, by saying, "I'm sorry.... I don't know what hit me, but I know I had to get sick QUICK!"
The clincher:
Bud was born with no sense of smell **AT ALL**.
It seems that this 'if we smell something bad, we vomit' response is such a instinctual response that hie consciously didn't have to know that there was a hideous odor in the room for the response to work!
You see, I KNEW Bud had no sense of smell, and I was testing him to see if the 'bad smell - vomit' response worked on a person who was not aware that a bad smell is in the air.
When I TOLD him that I knew he would respond that way, he dragged me out in the hallway, and started playfully beating me about the head and neck!
Since that time, I dated a guy that also had no sense of smell. He lived alone, and was seldom home, so the trash in his trash can (in the kitchen) built up slowly. On several occasions, I would go over to visit him, and when I opened the door, a 'bad trash' smell would nearly knock me over. Before I had a chance to say something to him, he would tell me, "I don't know what's wrong, Michael, but I have been feeling nauseous. all day!" I would tell him, "Bill, it's time to take the trash out." I also had to tell him when to change his bathroom towels, and I finally put him on a schedule to change his towels AND his trash. He was a VERY clean man, with a very clean house, but slowly accumulating trash and a one-man towel can be stinky in just a few days!
- Michael
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