Uninvited Guest

            Full disclosure: I was not at home when the following occurred. This is a second-hand account of the events of one warm Wednesday evening. Like a dentist extracting a stubborn wisdom tooth, I patiently pulled the details out of Wade. The details of which lingered like a gossamer blanket over the entirety of my house for a few days.

            The dog was put out for his nightly ritual of pooping and sniffing. But on this night his usual routine was interrupted by something. Something which caused him to not just bark, but to rear up on his hindquarters and bay at the intruder. Wade was upstairs preparing a bath for the child, presumably to make her mellow out so she would go to sleep quickly. Curious by the ferocity of our beagle’s cries, he proceeded to the closed guest room window.

            What he saw was the dog fixated on the three bins for recycling, compost and garbage (blue, green and black in colour and in that order, left to right). The dog would pace a few metres to the left but would quickly return to the spot between the garbage bins. Then he saw what the dog was losing his marbles over. A skunk.

            Being the intrepid scientist that he is, he began to record the account on his phone. Sadly, the focus on the video was the window itself and the video quality was akin to being at the optometrist with all of the lenses on the fancy chair in place. Blurry A. F. He sent it to me. I watched it, confused as to what I was looking for. Then I saw it. What looked like a saucy weasel sashaying between the blue and green bins.

            From text:

            Me: WTF?

                    It’s blurry

                    Weasel?

            Wade: Skunk

            Me: Fuuuuuuuuck

                     Did he get sprayed?

Then he gave me the cliffs notes of how he, single handed, removed the scourge of the nose from our yard. I got the Steve Harvey version when I got home.

            After watching the dog freak out at the skunk for a little while, Wade decided that it wasn’t a welcome addition to the fauna of our back yard. The neighbours can have it, but we don’t want that shit in our backyard. Huh, kind of like some people and a safe injection sites. I digress.

            He went outside, through the wide open back door, where the skunk was. Puzzling out what to do, he grabbed the rake. He noted that the skunk continued to spray its ass concoction intermittently. His bright idea was to open the back gate with the rake, allowing the skunk to scurry the fuck out of there. The rake is a standard yellow wide leaf raking contraption. The tines are plastic and, well, rather weak and flimsy. His attempts to jimmy the lock with one of the tines were unsuccessful. And causing more distress in his new stinky BFF. As a result, more stink.

            Being the good Canadian that he is, he went back into the house and retrieved his trusty hockey stick. What he found out later was that there was a gap under the fence which is probably how the critter gained access. We assumed we have the Fort Knox of backyards. So naïve. A second thought crossed his mind and he opted to grab the hose to actively avoid hand to ass combat. He deployed a steady stream to the skunk. Skunks don’t like water. It booked it out of the yard through the hole it had dug. The gate and bins were left covered in skunk stench.

            Relieved of the skunk, he went back to his fatherly duties.

            Then I came home. It was raining a little. I got out of the car expecting stink. My nose was met with the beautiful smell of freshly fallen rain. I opened the garage door. A faint skunk smell lingered. I was hoping that would be it but knew better. I opened the garage door on what I would imagine the inside of the scent glands on a skunk would be like. It grew worse the further into my house I went. It went from “oh yes, a skunk has been unhappy here,” to “a skunk’s ass has been lit on fire in here.” In the middle of the scent that you could cut with a knife sat my brave husband. Freshly showered, in clean pajamas and eating frozen pineapple. Both fans and the TV were on full blast.

            “So, tell me how you got it out of the yard,” I said as I leaned down to give my dog a sniff. He was unscathed through the entire incident.