Stunk

After the crazy week of the 48 Hour Film Project (see the link to David's blog, if you speak geek, for why something two days long took a week) and the excitement of making the Best of San Diego screening, I was looking forward to a thrilling weekend of doing nothing whatsoever. Alas, it was not to be. Or rather, it was, but I could not enjoy it.

Reason number #2,076 why my life is weirder than other people's:

Saturday morning I sent David out to water the plants, and he returned in short order holding his camera. "We have a problem," he said, and showed me the screen. In it was an ordinary shot of our garden hose, or what would have been an ordinary shot if it didn't have a stripey skunk asleep in the middle of it. "Yikes!" I said. That was my useful contribution.

Before long, the skunk had waddled over to sleep near our trash cans. As the sun moved higher, the skunk moved to a shady spot--under my car. At this point, something seemed fishy (it did not yet seem skunky) because, aren't skunks nocturnal? "Maybe he's dehydrated," I hypothesized. "Maybe he's a tame skunk who has chosen us to be his family," I added dreamily. In the interest of fostering good relations, I put a paper plate of melon under the car--the internet said they like melon.

Hours later, the melon was untouched, and the skunk wasn't moving. David decided to squirt him just a little with the hose as an incentive to move on. He squirted, and the skunk just sat there, forlornly getting wet. "That skunk is not well," David said mournfully. He was quite upset. I've often felt that David has a special bond with animals and should probably have his own show on Animal Planet.

Animal Control is closed on the weekends. Project Wildlife said they don't deal with skunks. We weren't sure what to do. The afternoon crept on. Jarrah was a little too interested in the skunk. "He doesn't feel well, " I told her.

In late afternoon, we finall smelled it. Skunkiness. Thick, strong, everywhere. It filled the whole house. It didn't even occur to me then what it must smell like in my car. Under the car, the skunk appeared to be dancing. David said he was having seizures. That didn't sound good.

We went out and didn't come back until 10:30. The skunk was there, now sleeping next to a rose bush. I woke up in the middle of the night and Googled "skunk removal." There were a bunch of services you could pay to remove skunks. That was reassuring, though I wondered how much it was going to cost.

In the morning, David told me that he'd called one of the services. The man had said, "That skunk has distemper and is going to die. It's not our problem anymore." "Whose problem is it?" I wailed. The stink was still everywhere, and I was afraid to go outside because we might get distemper, whatever that is. "Let's call Jessica," I suggested suddenly. "She knows everything."

Jessica said to call 911. She said it was an emergency because the skunk presented a danger to ourselves and our neighbors. That certainly seemed true. I called them. The lady on the phone cut me off--not unkindly--after a few words. "This isn't a police emergency," she said. "Have you tried 24 Hour Emergency Animal Control?"

Is that a magic place, on the other side of a secret force field? I wanted to ask. Because this is the first we've heard of it. But instead I copied down the number. There was a satisfying "your call is being recorded" beeping sound while I explained our situation. "We'll send someone as soon as we can," she said. "Keep an eye on him."

Finally, about 11:30, two ladies in official uniforms came, and David joined them outside. I saw them peering at the skunk but didn't dare look beyond that. David came back in after about five minutes and said they had agreed about distemper, said our skunk was suffering and wasn't going to make it, and had euthanized him with an injection before taking him away. "Where skunk gone?" Jarrah wanted to know. "The ladies took him to the hospital," I said.

I opened my car door. The smell was uncanny. We vacuumed everything and sprayed every surface with Nature's Miracle. I went to the car wash, and the car came out sparkling. I opened the door afterwards, and if anything, the smell was worse. I went to the drug store, because throughout this escapade, I'd been gritting my teeth from the flood of histamines in my limbs caused by my allergy to mosquito bites--bites I sustained over a week ago during the film project. As I exited the store, the smell of skunk assailed my sinuses. I looked up, and my mouth dropped open in amazement. I was smelling my own car from across the parking lot. I sprayed a lot of Fresh Linen Febreze in there and went to do another errand. When I opened the door again, a cloud of Fresh Linen Skunk smacked me senseless.

By the time I got home, the smell was lodged deep in my frontal lobe. I resigned myself to either a) selling the car or b) slowly losing all my friends because I'll be known as That Girl Who Always Smells Like Skunk. We went to dinner and sat outside, where trucks revved their engines inches from our food, and a man at the next table sucked on a big cigar. "Bring it on, baby," I said to David. "If it's not skunk, you could shove it right up my nose right now and I'd love it."

The only thing that cheered me up last night was going to see Hairspray, which is chockoblock with groovy singing and dancing from the first frame, not to mention the fabu hairstyles and dresses. 'Course the main character, Tracy Turnblad, rocks a 'do with skunk stripes, but I tried not to think about that.