Skunked

Gather ’round children, for what I hope will be the last time we must speak of this. It was Monday morning, about 6:45, when my oldest daughter came running into the house, with her dog, piper. They’d been in the back yard for piper’s morning ritual. Now, I don’t usually get up until about 7:20, when any of the four women in my house, have made room for me in my own bathroom, but this morning would turn out to be a little different. Through the haze that is usually my last blessed few minutes of sleep, I hear the words, “sprayed…….skunk!”…………yep, Aundi rebell-miller and Nancy Storrer, I blame you for this! As I lay there thinking, “what a crappy dream to finish a good nights sleep,” it came again, a little louder and a little clearer, “me and piper almost got sprayed by a skunk!””Man, this really is a crappy dream, my kid gets sprayed by a skunk, there aren’t any cheerleaders in sight, and I don’t smell bacon cooking anywhere. OH MY GOD! That’s why I can’t wake up, I AM awake. This isn’t a dream at all. “Where did this happen?” I ask. “Right out on the deck” she says . “I took piper out to potty, and when I turned around to come back in, there she was, staring straight at me, tail in the air!” “Is it still out there?” I asked. Knowing full well, it was out there alright. We ran in the bathroom to look out the window to see if we could see it. Of course, there it was, rooting around in the dead leaves, as though it owned the place. Now, facebook friends, I don’t know if any of you know the feeling you get, in the pit of your stomach, when you’re on the playground, showing off for all the pretty girls, and the playground bully comes up and starts showing off for all the pretty girls, by slapping you around, daring you to do something about it. Well, you know you gotta do something about it, because there’s girls watching, and you know you’re going to get beat up, well that’s exactly the feeling I had just then. So, off I go to deal with the skunk, “how can I get rid of this skunk without “A”. Getting sprayed by the skunk, and “B” keeping it from stinking up my house, and, “c”, keeping my dogs from getting rabies from the blood that will inevitably be spilled. I imagine if I go to flogging it about the head with my trusty fishing pole, that’ll just piss him off, and he’ll spray me. If I shoot him, and just wound him, that’ll REALLY piss him off, and he’ll spray the whole neighborhood, but if I shoot him in the head and kill him clean, I bet he won’t spray.” Well, I’m here to tell you, friends and neighbors, that’s just not the case. That’s the hope I was holding onto as I sighted in on the skunks forehead from about 15 yards away. I pulled the trigger, saw the skunk slump to the ground………….. Dead. I mean, it didn’t kick, it didn’t quiver, squeal, scream, cuss or squirm. I’m firmly convinced, it’s impossible to kill anything deader, quicker, than what I did that morning. I was still holding onto that hope, as the wave of funk washed over me, and my backyard, and my house, and before it was over, even my truck. I know everybody knows what a skunk smells like, but I smelled it in such concentration that morning, it made me remember fondly, the day when the school yard bully, slapped me around in front of the girls. I came home later that day, after disposing of the body, (that’s a whole other story) and it smelled so bad in my house, you’d have sworn I shot that skunk in the middle of my living room floor. Now kids, I’m sure there’s a moral to this story, or a lesson to be learned here, but if I could give anybody in this situation a piece of advice, it would be this. Wait til you see it in your neighbor’s yard, then shoot it.