Transcript
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Now, the rest of the story you've heard about Irish setter dogs, but this is about an Irish sniffer, a bloodhound named Smelly who once patrolled the IND division of the New York subway system. Smelly was like a bird dog. One transit official says. Put him near a leak and he'll point. Yet the kind of scent this bird dog could track can kill. You see, any underground transit system is a potential catch all for whatever lies above it. It may take weeks, it may take months for a toxic or a volatile something to seep down through a tunnel ceiling. But after it has, fumes may fill the enclosure. Fumes that can be ignited by a single spark from an electrified third rail. An explosion resulting from such leakage could kill hundreds. And officials say the average number of leaks discovered is eight a day. Eight a day. And the discoverer was once in the not too distant past, a sharp eared, even sharper nosed Irish sniffer named Smelly. The sharp ears came in handy, too. Neither you nor I could identify the faint hissing of a broken water main through the cacophony of subway and city noises. But Smelly could, and he could alert subway workers before the damage got out of hand. And when there was no noise to perk up his ears, there was usually some odor to put Smelly on point. Once. Once, it was the subtle and yet specific odor of elephant dung that aroused him. And sure enough, when workmen tore into the tunnel ceiling, they discovered seepage from a broken mane. And then they learned that the station lay directly beneath the site of the old hippodrome where elephants had once lumbered on stage. They once even brought Smelly into a Sixth Avenue tavern where the owners had complained of a mysterious odor. Immediately, Smelly moved about the establishment in diminishing circles, then stood on a chair sniffing at the ceiling. At the spot where the renowned Irish sniffer indicated, investigators ripped into the ceiling, revealing a nest of dead rats. Now, there had been no cracks in the ceiling, and yet Smelly had shown him to the very spot. During his years patrolling the subway, he had trotted all 720 miles of track, averaging about 10 miles a day, dodging subterranean traffic as he went. He had even saved the lives of uncommon conscious workmen by pulling them from the path of speeding trains. The New York transit system dreaded the day Smelly retired. Other sniffers have since been trained about 60 or so so far, but none can do the job with anything like the efficiency that Smelly once did. He Smelly pioneered this position. After all, it was Smelly who set the standards. You see, Smelly was not only aroused by aroma, he could identify that aroma by name. I mean, he could say that the smell was gas or rats or elephant dung or whatever. And transit officials learned never to question his diagnosis, for Smelly was no ordinary dog. In fact, Smelly was no dog at all. Dogs are not allowed in the subway. No. This bloodhound was of the two legged kind. James Patrick Kelly, nicknamed Smelly Kelly, who left Ireland at the age of 18 and who prowled the New York subway through the 1930s and for decades thereafter, saving lives with his nose. And now you know the rest of the story.