by Neena Strichart
A week ago Thursday night, or rather the wee hours of that Friday morning, I experienced what was to be the beginning of a series of what will forever be known to me and mine as the Great Stink Fiasco of 2013— GSF13 for short.
As I tried to sleep, I was awakened by a stench to match no other stench— the signature odor of a skunk. Now, we’ve experienced skunk-stink in our neighborhood before, but this was different. This smell just got stronger and stronger as the minutes passed. Within about 15 minutes of the first whiff, our home was completely engulfed with the nearly tangible combination of what can only be described as gassy petroleum aerosol ooze.
Steve and I both jumped up, performed a two-way sniff test on each of the dogs and came up empty. How can it be that the house smelled so strongly without any of the dogs having been “skunked?”
Could the skunk be in the house? Nope— the dogs would have gone crazy and probably trapped it under the bed or killed it by now. After a bit of investigation, we figured the skunk had “let loose” in our driveway right under our bedroom window. Nice.
Knowing there was nothing we could do, we TRIED to go back to sleep. Steve had a bit of a filtering device to rely on since he is a CPAP user. I, on the other hand, held a lavender sachet to my nose and attempted to snooze. After I finally dozed off for a few minutes, one of the dogs got spooked and scared one of the cats, who then ran across my face leaving me with a bloody, three-inch scratch on my forehead. OY!
Getting the bleeding to stop was no small feat. Finally doing so, I once again held the potpourri to my nose and went back to sleep.
When we awoke in the morning, the house absolutely reeked! Rolling my eyes, I staggered to get into the shower— but not before getting a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. The scratch on my head was still bleeding and looked like I had attempted a do-it-yourself frontal lobotomy with the sharp business-end of a bottle opener.
Moving forward with my day, I drove into work in a skunk-stink car that was only drivable with all four windows and the sunroof open for air. I finally got to work and walked in the door, apparently silently announcing my arrival with my odiferous presence. Needless to say, my staff steered clear of me all day.
Trying to find the humor in GSF13, I posted the following on Facebook:
House was skunk-bombed last night around midnight. NO SLEEPING for us. Then – dog scared cat 2am, cat bolted landed on my face and scratched me across the forehead. Came to work today – staff says I stink! Guess the skunk smell permeated all our clothes. Scratch looks like @*$^$(@! Today – it sucks to be me! Can I get a little sympathy out there??
Within minutes, I had several comments to my post offering sympathy and most suggesting tomato juice for skunk-smell removal. My favorite post was from pal Rob Schlesinger, who happened to be out of the country at the time!” Hugs and kisses from Belgium, have Little Stevie catch the skunks–no, he cannot keep them–send them to your least favorite telemarketing company!”
It has now been nearly a week since the incident. My head is healing nicely, but the skunk has not been captured. After setting a trap for two nights in a row, all we’ve caught are two very angry opossums! Drat! Anyone wanting to adopt a skunk, let me know. We’re going to trap him or her sooner or later!
By the way!my buddy Bill Pearl heard about the skunk incident and wrote about it at lbreport.com . The headline reads: Skunk Sprays Signal-Tribune Publisher’s House; “Everything Stinks, Including Me,” Says Neena Strichart.
Pretty funny stuff!
