Hey Kid,
Wait til you hear about what has been going on this week. It has been a wild one. Everything started when The Gentleman released the dogs for their final bathroom break of the night. Keep in mind, this was after eleven o’clock at night. First, he forgot to put their collar lights on them before he let them out in the dark. So off they ran into the dark, with no visual clues to let anybody know just how real things were going to get. It was several minutes before any of the dogs were seen again. But it wasn’t until The Gentleman opened the door to let them back in before anyone realized just how potent of a problem we had. In the course of mere seconds, an unholy aroma began to fill the entire house. At the time I had been in the middle of reading a most marvelous book that I came upon recently, called, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s been quite an interesting read. So far, I highly recommend it.
As I was saying though, I had been sitting there enjoying my book, when all of a sudden, I heard the sound of shrieking and shouting. When I walked out of the office, it was to see Mabel, standing in the dining room, waving her hands and shrieking as loudly as you can imagine. I opened my mouth to ask her what in the world was going on, when my nose suddenly caught up to the reality of the surrounding air. I clamped my mouth straight back closed and turned right around to go find your Ma, but by then, she was right behind me. Thankfully I managed to dodge quick enough to not knock her down right there in the living room. Unfortunately I was not quick enough to stop my elbow from knocking into the standing fan, which immediately tipped over and bounced against your Ma’s trampoline. By this point, Colt had joined the fray and was able to catch the fan before it hit anything else.
By this point, all three dogs had made it back into the house and it was becoming rapidly apparent that although Gracie Lou took the bulk of the hit, the other two dogs didn’t exactly escape unscathed from their encounter. The Kindred Spirit quickly took command of corralling them before they could spread the skunk essence any further into the house. Your Ma hustled around and dug out a big bag of baking soda and some peroxide before also finding a bottle of skunk remover that had been around since the days when Zorro made it his personal mission to personally antagonize every skunk he came across, in retaliation of the first one he ever got sprayed by. It had been sitting in that cupboard, unopened, for so long, that I was curious, but unsure whether or not it was even still going to work. The Gentleman got gloved up and started the eye watering, nose dripping, process of beginning the deskunkifying of the first dog. The World Builder came out to see what all of the fuss was about before he walked into the wall of stench. About a half a second later, he straight up disappeared. Not to be seen until the next day.
It was around this point that Mabel also tapped out. She had been kind of fluttering about for a few minutes, hollering at a little bit of everything and everyone, all while holding her lady kerchief over her nose and mouth, before she started to look sick and got out of dodge.
The Gentleman had just started on the second dog when the front door opened, “You guys wouldn’t believe the smell out…. Wow. I guess you would believe it. Who got sprayed?” As Steve walked in, his movements slowed, I half expected him to bolt too, but he’s made of sterner stuff than that and he stood firm as he asked, “How can I help?” Your Ma put him in charge of guarding the stairs so that none of the dogs could bolt before they had had their bath and drag the smell upstairs.
Throughout this entire time Gracie Lou was just pouring drool. I’ve never seen anything like that in a lab. It was crazy. You could just see it pooling in front of her on the floor and then in the tub. Her mouth just sort of hung open and she just kept sticking her tongue out like there was something on it that she just wanted to get off but it just wasn’t happening. I’m pretty sure she must have caught that spray right there in the mouth. (Especially since three days later, she still has skunk breath. It’s disgusting. To say the least.) The Gentleman tried so hard to carefully clean the area around her snout and face in an attempt to get as much of the skunk residue off as possible, but you could see it was a difficult task. He got her as clean as he could in one washing. The whole time your Ma just stood there, cool as a cucumber, mostly because you know, she can’t really smell much most days, and kept pouring the skunk removing concoctions on Gracie Lou and the rag that they were using to apply to her face.
Thankfully Moo managed to dodge the bulk of it and she’s little enough that it didn’t take nearly as long to get her scrubbed and out of the tub. Once Moo was safely encased in the tub, the damage control turned towards the house itself. Next thing I know your Ma has people taking bowls of baking soda and spreading them all over the floors of anywhere those dogs had been. Especially the area where Gracie Lou had been laying before she got into the tub. We just saturated the entire area, but man I tell you, that smell just crawled up inside your head like it was going to live there.
I don’t remember when, but at some point the new air purifiers got turned up to full blast in the hope of reducing the overall stench that had by now thoroughly penetrated the house. We tried to open windows early on, but it was clear that it smelled pretty much as bad outside as inside. Once all the dogs had been bathed, we checked again and the smell outside had largely dissipated so we opened up a few windows in an effort to flush some of the smell out that way. Honestly, I’m not really sure that it worked. All it really seemed to do was to drop the temperature inside the house. After about ten minutes or so, your Ma had us throw the towel in and we shut all the windows.
After the dogs were all bathed and the floors were saturated, the humans started the process of getting cleaned up themselves. First The Gentleman, since he was the one with the greatest amount of contact. He showered while the rest of us gathered up all of the towels and the rug that the dogs had come into contact with and tossed them straight up into the washing machine with at least two cups of baking soda I think. Except for the cloth used directly on Gracie Lou’s face. Your Ma was just like, ‘Yeah, no. Trash it.’ Once The Gentleman was out, your Ma headed in next. She was the one who had gotten the next largest dose of dog on her in the process of them getting bathed. The Kindred Spirit followed. Steve headed out, deciding that he would shower in the guesthouse. I decided that I would wait a little while before showering, because I wasn’t going to risk catching a cold shower, so I went out on the deck to get a breath of fresh air. I would have preferred for it to have been a clear night so that I could have enjoyed some time checking out the constellations but unfortunately that night it was cloudy. By the time I went back in, everyone else had gone off to bed for the night. The smell was still powerful strong in there. If the outdoor temperature had been a bit warmer I might have been tempted to go out and sleep on the trampoline, just to avoid the stench, but it was pretty chilled that night.
The smell was still pretty potent the next morning. Granted, that was only like six hours later that I woke up. When I came through your Ma was in her chair. Pretty sure she had about half of her head covered in ice packs. Turns out, skunk spray flared up her inflammation and it felt like her head was trying to explode on her. There wasn’t much I could do for her besides just trying to keep the dogs quiet. Thankfully that wasn’t much of a task though because they were all so wiped out from their late night adventure that they slept a lot later than usual.
Thankfully after another 24 hours or so, the air purifiers finally managed to cut through the bulk of the smell. Either that or our sinus passages all suffered irreparable harm and we lost our ability to smell. Come to think of it, have I been able to smell anything since then? I should probably go and test that theory out. Talk to you later.
Your very own Co-Conspirator,
Frank
Image created by Mel Seeley in collaboration with Google Gemini
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