Riding the Mystery Mobile

Two nagging mysteries recently solved:

1) Recently, I’ve been wondering why, after over 100 rat perfusions in grad school, doing perfusions on fish has me pulling the garbage can to my side out of fear that I’ll vomit. For those who don’t know, transcardial perfusion is a method for preserving highly perishable brain tissue for observation under a microscope. I’ll spare you the details, for although it’s completely painless for the experimental animal, it is a truly gross experience involving lots of guts and postmortem wiggling. Unless you are a coroner or one of those people who extract semen from prizewinning livestock, you will probably never do anything more disgusting. Anyway, doing the rats never bothered me much – much to my surprise, I have to say – but the fish are killing me.

And finally, during the last one I did, it dawned on me: Oh. It’s the smell.

I thought I was getting grossed out by fish guts (which are, like everything about fish, slimier than their terrestrial counterparts) and I couldn’t figure out why fish guts would be so much grosser than rat guts. They’re not. But fishgut smell is WAY worse than ratgut smell. To that list of gross jobs up there, I should have added “fish processing plant employee.” I can’t say that fish innerds are the worst thing I’ve ever smelled – mouse colonies, vitamin B oil, and fear-induced loose rat stools are way at the top of the list – but those win partly out of sheer strength. Fish guts don’t necessarily smell strong, they just smell really, really, bad, and when you’re perfusing, your face is all right up in there… oh god, I’ve gotta …

2) Speaking of bathrooms, the other mystery of late has been the litter of paper towels in the mens restroom on my floor. For some reason, there’s always a pile of paper towels scattered right around the inside of the entranceway to the gents’. I don’t understand it; it’s a whole floor full of nothing but scientists and lab technicians and a couple of office admin types, not exactly the sorts who pull all the paper towels out of the holder and throw them down punk rock style. And I know that the custodians clean there every day because I see them do it (they come at around 11:00pm, fyi). So what gives?

Today, after a “rest,” I went to leave the privvy and there was a paper towel stuck in the door handle… and it all made sense. We have a germ freak on the floor. He goes to the bathroom, like, 700 times a day, to wash his hands like the compulsive nut he is, and uses a paper towel to open the restroom door, and then just discards it onto the ground as the door shuts behind him. One can imagine the custodian shaking his head scornfully picking up the mess each night.

And now I’m left secretly observing everyone I ever see in the W.C. for signs of germ-freakyness. I’ll catch you, you big weirdo.

(And for the record, no, I did not use every possible synonym for “bathroom” in the post. I’ve got loads more.)