Man that reminds me of the time we chased a coolant smell for two days on our old lathe. Turned out a dead mouse had crawled into the chip auger housing and was just baking in there. We tore down half the machine looking for a leak, replaced a bunch of seals, the whole nine yards. My guy finally stuck his head in there with a flashlight and saw a tiny tail sticking out. Ten minutes with a pair of pliers and the smell was gone. Sometimes the dumbest things cost you the most time, that's just how this trade goes.

Man, that's the best kind of impulse buy! I did something similar at a flea market years back, grabbed a beat-up plant guide just because someone had stuck a pressed four-leaf clover between the pages. Turns out the whole book was full of pressed flowers and little notes about where each one was found, like "parking lot crack, brave little guy" next to a dandelion sketch. I never even used it for actual plant ID, but I still flip through it sometimes just to read the person's thoughts. You're not weird, you're just onto something good. Go back and grab the rest of that set before someone else does.