The Exotic Perfumed Engine Weasel

Sometime last week, I started noticing a faint perfumey smell in my car. Originally I thought it belonged to the baby sweater I had bought my friend and kept in my car for a day, and had a nice little smell to it. But the sweater was gifted last Wednesday, and the smell persisted. It got stronger, and somewhat perfumey, and I thought maybe it was on my scarf. Then, as the temperatures PLUNGED into the depth of frozen hell this week, the heat in my car started to be on more frequently and in greater intensity, I noticed the smell increasing proportionately.

Yesterday, it got to the point that it smelled like a little old lady had crawled up inside my heater and died. It sounds awful, but I Kid. You. Not. It reeked like my grandma's perfume. So as I was driving to our friends' Superbowl party, I asked N if he smelled anything. He did, and I proceeded to see if he knew what it was. I shared my observation about the heat, and we further deduced that it only happened when heat was blowing through the lower vents. I asked if an animal could have gotten up inside there, and N claimed that it would smell much more rank than it did. He then added (totally deadpan)...."Unless it's an exotic perfumed engine weasel."

Hilarity ensued, we arrived at the party, and the car was so damn cold by the time we got back in it, that the weasel was forgotten.

Today driving around, I had no choice but to blast the heat or lose my toes and was nearly asphyxiated by grandma-smell by the time I got to work. By this point, the matter was concerning me ever more greatly, and I called my dad. I described the smell, and he asked whether it was sweet....and then proceeded to freak me out by suggesting that I could potentially have antifreeze fumes leaking into my car.

When N got home today, I sent him outside to the car to smell my coolant to see if it was similar in scent, and approximately ten minutes later he returned, with his hands behind his back and a very smug look on his face. "I present the exotic perfumed engine weasel." He holds out a dryer sheet, which he had found clinging to the under-part of my driver's side dashboard.

It had escaped the apartment on my shoe, and lived on the floor of my car for one very odiferous week. *slaps herself on the forehead*

N offered to nickname me the perfumed engine weasel, but I suggested that it sounds a bit kinky without the backstory.

;)