Squid

The front hall of my building has an unpleasant smell lately, a bit like rotting vegetation and a bit like dog anal glands. It's not very intense, and it stops at the door of my apartment (probably due to air circulation; I have the windows open all the time in autumn but there's no circulation in the hall), so I don't care. I think it's from the trash cans in the basement, which have been pretty rank recently.

Some pair of giggling idiots who go up and down the stairs once or twice a day -- I assume one or more of them lives on one of the upper floors and not that, say, they just come here to exercise -- has taken to speculating as they pass my door that the smell is coming from here. I don't know why this is; maybe the smell stops when you take the next flight of stairs up. Maybe because I have a dog. Regardless, this drives me insane. Barring a set of unlikely circumstances, they know that the doors in this building stop sound only slightly better than tissue paper and that, if I'm home, I can hear them. The obvious solution to this problem is to wait silently on the landing and kick the door open when they pass, but my door opens inwards, so I may have to settle for taping a sharp note to it.