I grew up in a very old colonial house in a very quiet country town in Massachusetts. My house had a huge yard and a long dirt driveway that started on the street, went past my house, down past the back yard, through some woods, and emptied out onto another road. One characteristic our small town was the number of cats that wandered from yard to yard. I myself didn't have a cat as my asthma forbids it, but our yard was the stomping ground for many a frisky feline.

One day, a friend of mine and I were hanging around in my back yard. We had just played a vigorous round of catch, and were sitting at the edge of the driveway relaxing and talking. As we chatted, I found myself sifting through the dirt. I wasn't looking for anything in particular -- I was just finding rocks or the occasional nail or fragment of tree bark. Really, I was just fidgeting as the afternoon drifted overhead.

As I sifted more and more, I came across and fairly small, leathery object. It was firm, yet pulled apart like the substance fruit roll-ups are made up. It was pleasing on the hands to roll around and pull apart. My friend found a piece like mine. We continued to fondle the leathery object as the two of us talked.

After about 15 minutes of diddling with our strange finds, we noticed an odd odor wafting through the air. It gently entered out nostrils and slowly faded. This phantom odor kept coming and going, but gradually became more persistent.

The two of us started to really notice the smell and tried to figure out where it was coming from. We got up with leathery parcels in hand to check our shoes to see if we had stepped in poop. We checked our clothes to see if we had made contact with some foul poop while we were playing. But the shoes and clothes came up clean and doodie-free.

But when I wiped an itch from my nose, the smell -- like a shovel hitting me square in the face -- struck me and nearly induced immediate vomiting. As it turns out, our leathery friends were actually old pieces of cat crap. We had been zealously poking, prodding, tearing, balling, rolling, and squishing old cat poop. The odor didn't leave our hands for almost a week.
-- Jeff