Update From the Hood

There's been a little mystery cooking in my back yard. For two or three weeks now, my very precise nose has been picking up whiffs of natural gas. Not in the house, mind you. Only when I'm standing in the middle of the back yard. Hm, I says to myself. I suppose I should call the gas company. But I've been putting it off, mainly because most of the times I find myself in the middle of the yard I'm on my way to the garage, to run some errand or other. And you know how it is when you call the gas company, you're waiting around forever. The other reason being that whenever you call to report the smell of gas, they tell you, "Open all your windows and get out of the house." Well, I was already out of the house. And if I opened all the windows I'd only be letting the gas in. A dilemma, no? So the other day a bunch of friends and I are hanging out on the patio, enjoying one of the last reasonably not freezing days of the fall, and someone says, "I smell gas." "I know," I sigh. "It's not coming from the house. I don't know what the deal is- it's a mystery." "Oh, no mystery," pipes up one friend. "You've got a meth lab in the neighborhood." Now, this friend will tell you proudly she is from "North of 694." (Another Minnesota friend explains the local to me thusly: "You know, one of those places you go there and 'Dueling Banjos' starts playing in your head.") So I figure she should know from meth labs. [Hey- did you see how I said "cooking" in the first paragraph? Get it? "Cooking?" Foreshadowing!] So now I'm not sure what to do. I suppose the next time I smell gas out there I could look around and see who has their windows open. Or I could throw a party and invite a lot of DEA agents. Or I could just call Feds and ask how they're planning on coming up with the cash to keep operating this week, and see if they start acting all evasive. You never know.