I went out on the porch with a candle, some matches and a tulip 'perc (first
one I found lying around the house) clamped into some forceps. The 'perc
sizzled when I held it in the candle flame and smelled slightly like burning
hair, protein I'm guessing, but wasn't overpowering. What it did do, in a
most satisfying way, was expand like one of those "snake" fireworks we used
to play with as kids on the Fourth of July.

My next-door neighbor is the cop in charge of gang and drug busts in New
Haven. Billy was watering his wife's garden. What he made of me burning and
sniffing this weird substance, I don't know.

I wonder if the operculum is used as a carrying or amplifying agent for the
scent of the botanicals, sort of an olfactory fixative or mordant? Like
ambergris in perfume? Granted, I wasn't using a murex operculum. Maybe they
have a more interesting smell. If I can turn one up today, I'll try it. It is
my day off, after all, and we have no flying pigs in town to amuse us.