What Did Perry Smell Like? Installment #2 Posted on June 25th, 2008 by Brian O'Brien

For those readers who might initially have thought otherwise, this post deals with Perry, our largest plant of the Titan Arum / Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum), not with a human of that name.

Quite a while back (May 22, 2007), I posted a preliminary transcript of written comments by people who were exiting the Perry Room, reeling from Perry’s visual and olfactory glory. I have now transcribed the entire set of comments, and will post them here in installments. This will be the depersonalized, family-friendly version of the comments. That means that comments (1) that identify specific people (in spite of the frequently entertaining nature of those comments); (2) that are, in the judgment of this blogger, too crude for the sensibilities of the blog’s readership; and (3) that show evidence of incipient psychopathy will all be redacted.

Lovers of historical integrity can rest assured, however, that the complete record still exists, despite attempts by some to obliterate parts of it. The document was in other hands for quite a while for transcription, and was severely defaced by a succession of outraged transcribers. I have since re-acquired the original document, and persistent application of my forensic skills with regard to cryptic, sometimes mostly obliterated writing samples, honed by years of analysis of a subset of written answers from exams, paid off. The document now exists in almost all of its original glory. There’s a single exception – that entry appears to have induced a rage beyond human comprehension in one transcriber, who obliterated the entry to an extent where even the application of my titanic skills met with no success in retrieving it. Perhaps the FBI lab at Quantico could help with that one…

Thanks much to Kevin Oberg for suggesting that we have visitors write down their impressions – this has turned out to be a highly interesting historical document.

Onward to Installment #2 (this will repeat some of the items from Installment #1); I have preserved the original spellings, phrasings and other idiosyncratic features provided by the authors of the comments.

Dead Rabbit

Dead mouse

cabbage

some dead critter

washed up fish

garbages @ my house

Dead fish (2 weeks old)

Rotten fish

College View Trash Room

Rotten Sour Kraut

Cabbage

College View Trash Room

It smells like a [redacted]

It smelled like you put a dead rabbit & a bunch of weeds into our dumpster a week ago – & it’s July – yech!!

a dead mouse

fish bowl

a very dirty guppy bowl!

bad
peehew!

Fish sauce

rotten chicken

sauerkraut

rotten meat

not good

Lots of Propane

Road Kill

[redacted]

a really nasty [redacted]

Garlic

something gross!!

Supper!

Natural gas

Sewage

A Large, unwashed man

My Socks after 3 days in the Jungle

[redacted]

a fish pail

[redacted] restroom

giant [redacted]

An Anteater

Dead fish – spawned out

Dirty [redacted]

Sour kraut

Click here to view Perry via webcam. Better yet, click on over to Nobel Hall in person, and request a personal audience with Perry, via one of his/her acolytes.