Adventures in Turdistan

East Turdistan is the geographic designation by which I’ve been identifying our front yard since Marn coined the term a couple of months back. I even have a clear idea of what the Turdistani flag should look like: 

Picture a background of deep green grass, and a Carvel SoftServe chocolate ice cream cone in the foreground... sans the cone. 

You see, Turdistan (divided into East and West) is the dangerous landscape where our black Labrador mix, Jordan, converts expensive gourmet dog food into fragrant land mines.

Each Friday I send one of our two older children (henceforth to be know as the Foreign Legion) to patrol whichever one of the Turdistans have been most recently occupied by canine forces, to pick up the unexploded ordnance.

Because East Turdistan is the first thing that visitors to our house encounter when they arrive, I am careful to make sure the grass is nicely trimmed… and that the Foreign Legion has been scrupulous about doing its patriotic duty (specifically not in that order).

For most of the winter Jordan had been banished to West Turdistan (the back yard) for her bathroom breaks while I cultivated the lawn out front. We don’t go out back very often, so the Foreign Legion wasn't deployed there on ‘mine-sweep patrol’ very often (and when they were, I'll admit that as Commanding Officer, I didn’t review their work very diligently).

This morning, while I was waiting for the coffee to brew, I made the mistake of assuming that the Foreign Legion had recently patrolled all of West Turdistan, and made some preliminary preparations for the impending introduction of some light industry (a honey production facility), to this sovereign nation.

Unfortunately the Foreign Legion had not been through in some time... and I succumbed to some of the unexploded ordnance that the former canine occupying forces had left behind.

This by itself wouldn’t have been a tragedy had I noticed the damage right away. But unfortunately, the extent of my injuries didn’t become apparent until I was about a third of the way to Be’er Sheva... with the heater blowing full blast into the footwells.

I had been driving south with my car full of soldiers for about 20 minutes when I first noticed a smell that nobody in their right mind would mistake for coffee (or victory!*).

I quickly shifted the heater to the defrost setting (meaning that it was now blowing only on the windshield) and cracked the driver's window in hopes that the outflow of warm air would pull the offending odor up and out of the car with it.

Wouldn’t you just know it?!  I must have forgotten to pay my physics bill because all the laws were temporarily suspended!

Instead of the warm air (and all the doggy goodness it contained) rising up and out into the desert sky, ‘Le Parfum de Chien’ decided that the rush of incoming cold air would be an exciting way to circulate throughout the car.

I have to wonder at the fact that for the next 40 minutes nobody said anything about the increasingly unbreathable air in the car.

Not. One. Word.

Either these guys (and girl) were so deeply asleep that the offensive olfactory stimuli were not making their way into the Limbic System of their brains… or else they just really, really, REALLY didn’t want to risk losing a regular ride to their bases on Sunday mornings by mentioning the ‘odeur choquante’.

I guess we’ll find out next Saturday night whether the battle for West Turdistan has sent some of the IDF’s bravest soldiers scurrying away to find rides with less of an ‘international flavour’.

* gratuitous 'Apocalypse Now' reference.