From: mattb@ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Whiffy's
Date: 17 Aug 92 20:12:23 GMT
Reply-To: mattb@olympus.ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Organization: Cabletron Systems INc.

The more I read of this article, the more it seemed to me a microcosm of
talk.bizarre (if not of human existence). There are enough killers in 
here to keep us going for months.
Either Roger has started taking out personal ads in USA Today instead of
attending to his proper role, or Aaron wrote Sy a challenge with the words:

musk
aficionado
Scrooge
lemonade
Restriction: Written in the form of a wire service news feature.

From the Boston Globe, 8-17-92 (with out permission of course):

_Whiffy's Club Is A Very Select Group_
by Sy Montgomery

Summer is a time of sensory rhapsody for "Mrs. X":
"I can think of no combination of things using the five senses," she writes,
"that can rival...the feel of a warm summer breeze, the taste of a cool drink,
the sights of a beautiful garden, the sound of rushing water and the faint
smell of skunk."

"Mrs. X" is a member of the Whiffy's Club -- and like many of the club's
members, she prefers to stay anomymous.  The Whiffy's Club, you see, is 
composed entirely of people who LIKE the smell of skunk spray.  Some Whiffers
so relish the aroma that they keep a vial of the scent handy for an invigor-
ating sniff.  (That way "you don't have to wait for one to die," says "Marilyn"
the antiques dealer who started the club with personals ad (sic) in USA Today
seeking fellow skunk musk aficionados.)

How can anyone stand it -- much less like it?

As an article in the current issue of National Wildlife magazine explains, 
it's thought that some, shall we say, nasally challenged folk can't smell
the stinky chemicals in skunk musk -- but they can smell the "undertone odors"
the stinky compounds mask.  One Whiffer, a scientist at the Monell Chemical
Senses Center in Philadelpia, says skunk smells to him exactly like lemonade.

The predilection for skunk musk is, however, rare.

Not even skunks like the stench -- occasionally they spray one another while
fighting, and the victims beat a malodorous retreat.  Even dogs -- and here
we're talking about creatures who delight in sniffing beneath one another's
tails -- have been known to retch at the smell. (About the only predator that
doesn't seem to mind it is the Great Horned Owl.)

Precisely because skunk musk is so repellent, it was only a matter of time
before someone figured out a way to get people to pay for the stuff.

Hunters, trappers, and wildlife photographers use diluted musk to mask their
own scent.  Ray Hanson of Cheteck, Wisc. ran a successful business, "Skunks
Unlimited," catering to that crowd for seven years.  At one point he tried to
marker Skunk Guard, a mace substitute that you, like a skunk, could spray at
an attacker.  To his surprise, Hanson discovered people were reluctant to use
it for fear of getting any on themselves.

Rocky Mountain Wildlife Enterprises in LaPorte, Colo. sells skunk-based Scrooge Christmas Tree Protector to tree farmers to prevent poachers from chopping down
and stealing their crop.  Other clients spray it on abandoned warehouses to
discourage drug dealing, or in urban cemeteries and parks to deter loitering.

Major Boddicker, who owns the firm, says folks come up with new uses for skunk
scent with every order.

Might we soon be facing a shortage of skunk spray?  Fear not, he assures. A
skunk holds perhaps three-quarters of an ounce of musk in the glands under
its tail; Boddicker reckons he uses a quart a year, most of it mixed in parts-
per-billion amounts with other compounds.  A little goes a long way.

Matt
That Boddicker guy must be a real treat in a closed room.
Maybe Rictus Hep could get a job with him as a skunk milker?