Skunks? Oh, no…

Yesterday we had an encounter with the skunk smell.  Maybe some of you have experienced this too, but up until now, all I knew of the skunk smell is the whiff of it I got driving to some activity or other in the car.  But believe me when I say it is not at all pleasant when you get up close to the stink, or when it gets into the house.  This is what happened to us.  Let me tell you a story…

My brother loves animals, and also loves to study them.  He traps various creatures, but sometimes he encounters something that changes the course of our whole day.  Yesterday, it was the skunk.  About a week ago, we found some holes in our yard where a skunk had been digging.  My brother later put a trap outside for it, and yesterday he caught it.  Let’s pause for a second and give my side of the story:

I had planned out my day the night before, woken up early, and started school.  Around noon, I got on the computer to check my email and do some Latin.  Then my brother walked in after taking care of the skunk.  I nonchalantly listened, thinking it would not affect me, but then I caught a whiff of something awful.  The skunk had sprayed after it died, and because he didn’t know how bad it would smell, my brother had dealt with it right next to our house, where he had caught it.  We think the skunk’s spray had drifted into our house with our brother, through the door, and through the fireplace.  I jumped up when I smelled it and began trying to run away from the stink.  First, I found that the whole first floor was intruded by the smell.  So, thinking I could escape, I ran to the basement.   Eeek!!  The smell is following me!  The smell was in the main part of the basement, so I hurried into my older brother’s basement bedroom.  I stood there, thinking I had escaped.  I lay down on the floor and wasn’t sure what to do.

Then, I caught another whiff of something…  Ahhhhh!!!  I CANNOT believe this!  The skunk spray is so, so powerful!  Here I am in a bedroom in the basement inside a closed house, and that skunk had sprayed OUTSIDE! (I didn’t know that because it sprayed near a basement window that that would change anything.)  I tried upstairs, outside, and in my bedroom closet, but I couldn’t fully escape the smell.  I ended up laying on my brother’s bedroom floor, reading a book about the Civil War and trying to cover my nose the best I could the whole time.

After a while, my mom and I left to Kroger to get some air fresheners, a spray bottle, and vinegar.  Yep, you heard that right.  Vinegar.  My mom had looked online and seen that spraying vinegar around the house, boiling vinegar in the kitchen, and putting on the fans would help.  It would absorb the skunk smell, and when the vinegar dissipated, the skunk smell would go away with it.  I’ll tell you now that we think it worked.  But for a warning, it smells AWFUL before everything dissipates.  First, think of the most powerful stink you’ve ever smelled that is coming from a skunk.  Now think of vinegar mixed with that… and now imagine all the Febreeze that we had sprayed in the house.  WHEW!

We had both run into the store, grabbed 2 big things of vinegar (we didn’t know how much we needed), and my mom had loaded up on the cinnamon-apple air fresheners.  While my mom and I drove back from Kroger, I grabbed the five air-fresheners that we had gotten and unwrapped them quickly.  We parked in the garage, and I opened the passenger door.  The skunk smell poured in.  I opened the air freshener, put it close to my nose and breathed in deep.  Then I hopped out of the car.  I was hit with the stink as I opened the door of our house, and I rushed in.  My siblings stared curiously as I ran around the first floor, desperately opening each air freshener and putting it down.  My siblings had gotten kind of used to the smell, so they were eating.  I also ran around the house spraying vinegar.  I’m sure I looked crazy.

I’ll fast-forward now.  We all left the house to go out somewhere, and when we got back it was actually worse!  My brothers put the skunk in the forest, and we all tried to ignore our headaches from all the smells.  I felt bad for my dad when he came home from work…  I later opened the windows because the skunk was gone, and the outside no longer smelled like skunk.  This helped a lot.  I went upstairs, read a book, and when I came down, the air smelled so much better!  None of us had eaten much (our appetites were taken away after smelling the skunk), and I didn’t finish all my school that day, but I think the whole thing is kind of funny.  It wasn’t much fun in the middle of it, but now I have a great story to tell!  I still have gotten a whiff of skunk now and then today, but I am very thankful that the smell is mostly gone from the house.  Have you ever encountered a skunk?