Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 52
22:25
07/10/10
If it had just been a raccoon or a possum, or a rabbit or even a goddamn badger, I could have reached down with my frog net, scooped it up, chucked its ass into the woods and gone about enjoying the last hours of my holiday weekend.
But no. It was a skunk.
When I found Tulip the Dog growling (thankfully – and maybe, MAYBE, rather intelligently – from afar) at a deep and hidden window well late Monday afternoon, I swept aside the brush to find a skunk nestled against the window of our spare bedroom. He appeared to be wounded and wasn’t moving and for all I knew he could have been trapped in that little area for two weeks and had already gone to stank heaven. Secretly, I hoped this was just a matter of careful exhumation.
And then he twitched. Fuck.
Here’s the thing: I don’t have it in me to let an animal suffer. I could probably smother an old woman with a sack of Quickcrete (if, y’know, she owed me money) before letting something furry linger in pain. So I had two options here: kill the skunk or perform an intricate and possibly disastrous rescue operation. Now, the skunk looked hurt, and I figured that he probably brained himself falling headfirst into the bones of some other animal that had dipshitted its way to a slow, starving death in this window well of doom. So I really did consider just grabbing my .357 and ‘rescuing’ Mr. Skunk into the lands of 72 stanky virgins. But then it occurred to me that while the skunk didn’t seem to smell too bad right now, the impact of a slug from short range might, er, alter that situation a little.
A little bit about this small-animal graveyard. I guess it’s some sort of law here (maybe everywhere?) that basement bedrooms have their own means of egress in case of a fire. Makes sense. So, our two spare bedrooms each have people-sized escape hatches. This particular bedroom’s escape window is a solid four feet off the floor, so you really have to stand on a chair or something to get to it. Once outside the house, you’re standing in a 3X3 vertical tunnel with the ground (and sweet freedom!) right around eye-level, and there isn’t a stepladder or a whole helluva lot of wiggle room. You have to drag yourself up with whatever traction you can find on the corrugated metal that forms the walls of the well. It ain’t easy, even for a full-grown adult with opposable thumbs. In short: A small child sleeping here will likely still burn to death.
Luckily, the only thing that lives in this bedroom is ALL MY SHIT. 30,000+ comic books, toys, big-boy books – essentially all the cool stuff I’ve spent my life accumulating. And now the only thing separating my lifetime supply from small-rodent napalm is a thin pane of cheap glass. No, I couldn’t risk riling up the skunk’s natural musk with bullets. A rescue operation was in order.
But how do you rescue a skunk without becoming skunky yourownself? Of course it was a holiday, so no conservation officer or professional pest remover was even near a phone, let alone returning voicemail. Nope. All up to me. So I made the skunk a ramp. Yeah, due to the tight space, it was a steep ramp. Like 70 degrees at best. But skunks are just giant, stinky ferrets, and I know from experience that ferrets can escape ANYTHING. Like, I’ve watched a ferret climb a bare window and skitter across the ceiling like that chick in the Exorcist III. I MIGHT be misremembering that particular instance, but I know that weasel-based critters are quite adept at getting out of tight spaces. Even ones who seem kinda groggy and maybe a little injured should be able to use a ramp. Right?
Whatever. Dr. Stinkynuts would either liberate himself using the tools provided, or he’d stew there till the morning when I could talk to a professional. He didn’t seem to be bothering anything. I did my part.
Fast-forward three hours. It’s getting a little dark, and starting to rain. Airika, the dogs and I are sitting on the porch, relaxing the weekend away. I’m starting to smell skunk. Like, REALLY smell skunk. Grab the flashlight and go check PePe. Oh, he’s awake and apparently not very injured. He’s bustling to-and-fro, standing on his back legs, clearly agitated about his predicament. But he isn’t using his ramp. Of course he isn’t.
He’s not spraying, but the whole area – porch, yard, fucking basement – is getting awfully skunky, and we have to get this little prick out of there NOW. Quick Googling: Skunks aren’t climbers. And they really won’t climb something smooth, like a finished board. However, skunks are kinda blind (stupid) and they apparently fall into window wells all the time, so there’s a tried-and-true method of extraction. Throw some stinky cheese into a kitchen-style trashcan, tie two ropes around the can, lower the can on its side into the infected area, wait for skunk to fetch cheese, spring your trap and elevator-the little bastard to safety. And run like hell.
So we do as Mighty Google commands. And of course the skunk won’t go NEAR the can or the cheese, which is somewhat of an impossible feet considering the space constraints. By this point, the mosquitoes are blanketing the area, which means the bats are out in force, which means at any given time either one of us could take a bat to the face, make a false move and trigger the increasingly active skunk’s cocked-and-rocked asshole, get bled to death by the rampaging horde of vampire insects, slip on the wet grass or just break down with despair.
After seeing that the skunk is clearly mobile and able, I get the bright idea to staple chickenwire to the ramp, and slap some skunk-friendly vittles to the top. Make it as easy as possible for this him to waddle out on his own. It’s all I got left. By this time, the smell is so bad you can chew it. It’s recalling being at the comic shop on a hot Saturday afternoon. Horrid.
Of course I can’t find my chickenwire. I rifle through the entire garage three times and then I remember that I tucked it away in our shed, which is WAY across the dark backyard, which is teeming with bats. Our backyard at dusk is like that bridge in Austin. Horrid. So I put my hands on my head and stumble-run through the rain to the shed. Only got buzzed twice, and I got the wire, which I find stapled to a bunch of fence posts. Nothing is ever easy.
Of course I’m out of staples. Nothing! Ever! Easy! So now I have to NAIL the goddamn wire to the wood, and I have to have it pretty flat to the surface or the skunk won’t even try to climb it. If you’ve ever tried to nail old, bent chicken wire tight to anything under the BEST of circumstances and kept your sanity, you deserve a fucking Nobel prize. Doing it in the rain, in horrible light while wearing a mosquito jacket and dodging flying rats nearly broke me.
The whole time I’m hitting my own thumbs with the hammer, Airika is trying to coax the skunk into the can. And failing. And absorbing a certain aroma. Heh.
Anyway. I finally finish the new tractiony ramp and lower it into the hole. We stick some cheese and pepperoni on the end. It’s all we can do. We get back inside, and when I take off my skunk-saturated clothes, Airika gasps. I’d been bitten by so many mosquitoes that my entire back, from ankles to neck, looks like Kevin Spacey in Outbreak.
The entire house, inside and out, reeks of skunk. You know how when you drive past a dead one, you can sometimes still smell it on your car when you park? Imagine having one alive and fresh stuck to the side of your house. I’m writing this a week later, and I STILL smell skunk. And Airika’s hair? Still a little skunky. But don’t tell her I said so.
Really long story short: The skunk was gone in the morning. But the memory remains. Oh, Jesus, does it remain.
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