What's that smell?

Having children opens up your life to all sorts of new questions... and a question asked frequently is either "What's that smell?" or "Where's that smell coming from?"

Last Thursday, this: Hubby and I had noticed a strange smell in the girl's room. "Honey, what's that smell?"  The girl smiles sweetly (maybe even batted her eyelashes), and responds "I don't know...". Thursday I'm in the girl's room vacuuming, look under the bed, under the dresser trying to determine where the offensive odor is coming from. Mission is unsuccessful, continue on cleaning the rest of the house.
Thursday evening, am home alone with the girl, in her bedroom.  I follow my nose and am HORRIFIED to discover on her shelf, behind some crafty things the following:

• a small goldfish bowl containing,
• dandelions
• broccoli
• cucumbers
• parsley
• water
• a pink lizard toy
• possibly some rocks

I immediately took the lizard's habitat of green, rotting goop to the toilet to flush. Girl follows me, screaming and crying - "Don't flush away my lizard! Mommy, I need my lizard!"  I allow the screaming child to stick her hand into the rotting, green goop to remove the lizard before I flush the remaining contents.
The girls then tries to scrub away the odor from the pink lizard - spends several minutes with shampoo and soap.  The lizard REEKS... and I throw it away.  This of course induces a tantrum of screaming and crying. We haven't even had dinner yet, but I put the girl in PJ's and tuck her into bed, still crying.  A while later, I call Nana and Papa to share, and apologize for any rotten things I put them through when I was a child (hubby and son were at soccer). During the call I decide I must go check in on girl, as crying has finally stopped.  Pull down covers to discover bed is filled with pillows, girl is missing.  Search the house to discover that she is hiding under an end table...
Oh - to have the mind of a 6 year old again!  We had a big talk about NEVER again bringing anything like that into the bedroom again!