I am fascinated by my dog’s obsession with licking the terrace tiles when it rains.
Last week I had the opportunity to question a biologist and naturalist about it. He, named Andrés, after twisting his face because of the inappropriateness of my question in the context of having a few beers and some olives among friends on the terrace of a bar, answered me, very politely, that my dog’s action was due to probably due to their olfactory sensitivity.
When dogs detect a particularly interesting smell, they feel the urgent need to complement the nasal stimulus with the gustatory one, as if to give more dimensions to the experience, and they attack to lick whatever they find at hand. He specified that it is possible that the dog is also attracted to geosmin, a metabolic product resulting from the work of a series of actinobacteria that interact with rainwater generating petrichor.
Petrichor is the name given to the smell caused by rain falling on stone floors that have long suffered from drought. The word comes from the union of two Greek words: πέτροςpetros, which means “stone”, and ἰχώρikhôr, the liquid that flows through the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.
“Hot cookies!” I blurted out, “that’s what flows through the veins of the gods!” and I stopped paying attention to it instantly. Andrés ended up being convinced that I need one potato for the kilo.
What happens to Roma, my dog, with the fragrance of the rain against the stoneware tiles, was experienced by my classmates in fifth year of EGB and I, on one of those bus excursions for an educational visit to the oil mill, the planetarium, the fire station or the Roman ruins on duty.
Every year, following a tradition that went back more than two decades, the fifth-year EGB students at my school made a pilgrimage to the industrial estate to discover the secrets of the cookie factory where LU produced the Prince of Beukelaer and the Dinosaurs. That year it was our turn. No one was able to sleep the previous nights. The day arrived and we got on the bus, very excited, ready to travel the yellow brick road to meet the Wizard of Oz.
The visit was memorable, without a doubt. In fact, as a result of our promotion passing through the facilities, the school was forever banned from all the factories that the company had in the national territory.
We were good kids, but like the dog with petrichor, we went crazy. As soon as we crossed the metal door that led to the production hangar, we lost sight of the world. The smell, my God. That sweet, hot smell of a cookie baking. Not a single isolated snort, the one that escapes when you open the oven door at home to see if the cookies are ready, no. An incessant, deep, ubiquitous wave, something obscene and irresistible.
Our minds became cloudy, we stampeded, enraged, blinded by the aroma, deaf to the shouts of the teachers, and we rushed against the running machines. We assault conveyor belts, we put our paws in recesses, we dismantle pallets, we open boxes, we pile warm cookies by the armful, we stuff our backpacks like wild beasts, starving or a bunch of simpletons. We left there with anoraks and bombers swollen like billiard balls, triumphant.
For the LU workers, that day we disrupted their entire production chain. The fight on the bus was of epic proportions. The teaching staff was evaluating our case for weeks, behind closed doors, and in the end the school management decided, with the approval of parents and guardians, to punish us that year without camps.
Not going to colonies was no drama. The students from the other fifth grade, the “good” class, did go, and it seems that we didn’t miss much. They took them to spend two days of educational days – a learning field, they call it, that scam of colonies -, to Coma-ruga, a piece of beach in the El Vendrell area, in Tarragona, which is not famous for being especially pretty. It is seen that the instructors prepared a nighttime clue game so well designed that the kids were not able to find the industrial bags of popcorn that the teachers had buried in the sand as a prize. You’ll tell me, popcorn tempered and soaked by the sea breeze, what a wonderful non-reward.
The visit to LU was the best school outing of all that I remember.
I completely understand that the dog becomes so obsessed with smelling the rain against the stone of the terrace. Petrichor has to smell like a tsunami of hot cookies.
#maddening #power #smell #hot #cookies