It’s 4:30 in the morning and I’ve experienced one of the joys of rural life. As any other old man is apt to do on a Friday night, I went to bed about 10:30. My lovely wife fell asleep on the couch while watching some misunderstood sci-fi alien psycho axe killer on the Chiller channel. At 4:00, she made her way to the bedroom and gave me a good shake. “Wake up. You need to go close the garage doors.” Even though I wasn’t fully awake – I was pretty sure that thought didn’t just come to her in a dream.
“ I think there’s a skunk in the garage. The dogs have got it cornered.”
I was awake enough now to understand the gravity of the situation. Our old Lab is a hunter – he hunts snakes, turtles, squirrels, birds and field mice but he especially loves skunks. Their spray is like Chanel # 5 (guess they still make that) to him. He manages to get “skunked” about twice a year and it takes about six weeks for the odor to become tolerable enough for us to get close enough to scratch his belly. But the matter was complicated by the fact that he had recently had a tumor removed from his front paw and still had stitches. As a result, he had been spending much of his time inside the house. In fact, I had just put him out the front door at 2:00 am.
Tracy said “close the garage doors” but that really didn’t make any sense and that really wasn’t what she meant. She meant “You go out and get that skunk out of the garage before it stinks up my car. By now I was awake enough to smell the smell and hear the dogs barking. Anybody who has dogs knows that they have different barks for different situations – the somebody ‘s coming bark- the big ol truck on the highway bark- the UPS truck is comin & I’m gonna try & pull its tires off the rims bark and then there’s the higher pitch yelp indicating that there’s something going on here that I really don’t like. This bark was coming loud & clear (just like the smell) through the utility room door. Ol’ Shad had him cornered right by the doorstep. This was gonna be a mess and only get worse. I rolled out of bed, threw on a t-shirt, turned on all the outside lights and tentative opened the door to the garage. There were two of the dogs – barking and lunging right by the steps. In the corner, between the steps and the rack that held soft drinks and dirty boots and anything else we didn’t want to bring in the house - was a possum, not a skunk. But he smelled just as bad if not worse. Shad had him cornered – bared teeth to bared teeth & Sophie was cheering him on – Dixie was cowering on the front porch. ‘
Well, Shad couldn’t take him without getting a serious bite and the possum couldn’t get around Shad and it was a stinking, loud mess that could have continued for hours. I won’t go into detail about the method that I used to dispatch our intruder but let’s just say that ol’ possum is lying in the bed of my truck until daylight and a little clorox water will kill the possum smell in the garage. It could have been worse. It could have been a skunk. Thank the Lord for small blessings.
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