Outdoor Smell

I had a pretty weird email from the Fredericksburg Alert system yesterday, and timed bizarrely while en route to Fredericksburg. The subject was “Outdoor Smell,” and the email read as follows:

This is a notification from the City of Fredericksburg:

Please be aware that with current weather conditions, the noxious outdoor smell that is similar to a gas leak is actually the King George landfill odor wafting into the City. If there is a gas smell inside AND you have natural gas service, then please contact 9-1-1.

Disquieting to think a regional landfill is perfuming the city given weather conditions (not sure if it was wind, but assuming as much), but I worked at the College of Staten Island, so I’m no stranger to such realities. But about six hours later they sent a second email that was even more bizarre:

Follow up to this morning’s alert.
The source of the odor could not be confirmed.
No gas leaks were found in the city.

It almost reads like a decontextualized stanza to a poem, the idea that the smell is no longer linked to the landfill (I never knew a landfill to smell like gas), and there seems to be no evidence of where it came from now. It’s like I am walking into the beginning of an eerie movie plot, I kinda love it. 

If we don’t, remember me….