Distillations - What the Dog Knows - page 58

become, in the nicest possible terminology, “less organized and more susceptible to outside
influences.”
All of it is a complex kind of self-digestion, cellular walls rupturing, everything rich with
now-unchecked enzymes. Flies know it. They can locate a body minutes after death. Well-
trained cadaver dogs know it's the sweet spot.
A decomposing body, especially outdoors, doesn't automatically smell awful. It depends
on the days and months the person has been there; what the temperatures, prevailing winds,
and humidity have been doing; and what role insects and animals may have played in that
body's progression toward dust. I have stood a few feet from a two-month-old body at a
human decomposition research facility and gotten a milky, gassy sweetness up my nose,
along with hints of leather and bacon. Someone with a touch of synesthesia appropriately
called such a scent “yellowish-orange.” The next instant, the air vortices shifted slightly, and I
smelled nothing at all.
Human decay is more marvelously complex and varied than people claim. It's not a scent
version of what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography: “I know it
when I see it.”
Except for food, wine, and flora, I don't dwell too much on what I smell. This is not af-
fecting machismo, but something closer to its unbidden opposite: Our brain is hardwired
to avoid decay, even Korean kimchi or other fermented delicacies. So while I need to work
with training samples without shuddering, I don't spend time wafting them underneath my
nose and figuring out their specific bouquets. Inevitably, though, the scent finds its way up
my nose. I've smelled enough variants of human decay, or nothing at all, that I would be
hard-pressed to narrow the scent down: It's not “unmistakable” and “unforgettable.” Those
are emotionally comforting adjectives; we want human decay to be unique and special. We
want to be something more than another rotting organism when we die.
But there are all sorts of human decomposition pretenders out there, not just in the animal
kingdom. In the forests of Sumatra, and now in specialty botanical gardens worldwide, there's
a decomposition cross-dresser called the corpse flower. It's one of the largest, ugliest, and
smelliest flowers in the world. It blooms once every six years. Its scientific name, Amorpho-
phallus titanum , means “huge deformed penis.” I'd like to see one, though not smell it. The
corpse flower attracts insects, blowflies, flesh flies, and carrion beetles by releasing putrescine
and cadaverine. Those chemicals of decomposition are still used for training cadaver dogs, al-
though a number of researchers have established that the chemicals aren't volatile in burials.
And they are common. Once you start sniffing, those scents appear everywhere. Some min-
erals in the red clay of North Carolina vent what smells like death. I've been on more than
one futile dig where the crime scene investigators say they clearly smell human decomposi-
tion and find nothing.