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kjpepper[Originally emailed to a bunch of friends]
Last night I hath passed a milestone in my conversion from diehard concrete pounder to country bumpkin - I have assisted in the cleanup of a skunking. Bleargh.
Carole (my Lady, to those of yous who don't know) works until 11pm and rides home on her bicycle 6 miles from the Hampshire Mall. This is because the PVTA is now on summer schedule and no longer run past 10:30. Kind of inconvenient for those of us that need to work late and are vehicularly challenged, but biking is good exercise and there is a nice long direct bike path from there to the main part of downtown Northampton. You'd think it would be dark and creepy at night, which it is, but considering Carole hasn't been a victim of a random Hadley spork attack yet . . . looks like the only things attacking on the Norwottuck rail trail is the nocturnal wildlife. So here is Carole biking along, when out of nowhere a large skunk darts into the path directly in front of her bike! She rolls over its hind end with the front wheel and manages to swerve aside fast enough to avoid hitting it with the back wheel, which was probably lucky for the skunk because most of Carole's two hundred and change pounds is resting on her back wheel. As it was it just freaked out, and, well did the obvious. Half an hour later Carole arrives home with herself, her bike, and her good work shoes reeking of freshly pissed-off skunk. Austin (our downstairs housemate) and I, who fortunately were awake when she got home, could just about smell her coming.
Skunk musk is one of those special insideous fragrances that can only be combatted by the stench of something equally strong smelling and heinous, which in this case, Austin quickly decided, was tomato juice. Lots of it. But immediately our intrepid trio of the Casita Amarilla (this is what we call our household) was faced with a dire problem. There was not even a molecule of tomato juice in the house. This wouldn't have been much of a problem except that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is still stuck in the 16th century in terms of what can and what can't be open and for how long
on "The Lord's day." No liquor, no smokes (if you're into that sort of thing) and even respectable places that are open 24 hours during the week, like the Super Stop and Shop, for instance, close at midnight during the weekend. And the douchebags wouldn't open up for an emergency purchase of tomato juice. So much for helping out people in need. Not even the department of Public safety could help us in our quest for emergency skunk repair. Instead we probably made the laugh of their evening . . . But anyway, Austin and I doused Carole with bug balm and sat her outside of the house on the lawn so that she wouldn't stench up the rest of the house, and then the two of us set off at 12:35am, to find _something_ somewhere that was open and sold vast quantities of tomato juice and buckets. Nothing in Northampton, like that, even the friggin Sprawl-Farts, I mean, Wal-Marts, were closed on Sundays. Friggin' Provincial Yahoos. So we tried West Springfield since there's a commercial drag there. Nothing open there either. We try Springfield. Heck, it's the closest thing to a big city we've got out here, right? Nope. Much pissed at the inconvenient Theocracy our beloved country is, and using language inappropriate for proper young ladies (not that Austin and I, in our pajama pants, t-shirts, and unkempt hair, resembled anything close to the proper young ladies we scorn on a daily basis), Austin and I, annoyed at haven gotten nowhere after an hour and a half of driving, decided desperately to cross the state line in our search. As soon as we crossed into Connecticut, bingo. There, in Enfield, 30 miles South of home, beautiful to us weary travelers in it's 2am isolation, was a A&P Super Foodmart. AND IT WAS OPEN!
15 minutes later, Austin and I depart CT armed with 12 enormous cans of generic tomato juice and three 10 gallon buckets. We set off for the half hour drive home, where I forced Austin to chug Jolt cola in order to keep her awake and sane on the drive home (I succeeded with the awake part at least, and as for the sane part simply wound up irritating the hell out of her). We arrive home to find a sad, rather bug eaten and cold Carole, who has been patiently waiting for us to come home to rescue her from her own stench for a little over two hours.
One home we get down to brass tacks. Twelve cans of tomato juice must be opened, six of which would go to bicycle and environment repair. Four would go into a bathtub of water for neutralizing Carole herself, and subsequently after working closely with the sources of stench, us as well. Two just to dump over our heads or anything else not thoroughly deskunked. Essentially, another hour was spent in deskunking Carole's bike and the front porch, by scrubbing everything in V8like substances. One hour later we weary Warriors Against Olefactory Assault removed our skunky clothing, put it in a trash can full of diluted tomato goodness, and then ran inside before the mosquitoes or the neighbors could detect our very nude presences. Half an hour later we were all coated in tomato juice, and soap, thoroughly rinsed, and sitting around Austin's apartment, shellshocked from the whole stinky business. Austin and Carole, the lucky wenches, got to call in this morning. I had to teach a Photoshop class at 9am, so I was not happy about having to wake up two hours after I had crashed to rush to work! But It was an experience to be remembered, and now if any of you wildlife explorers happen to meet a pissed off skunk, you'll know what to do.
Morals of this story:
1) Never ride through a well wooded bike path when stupid skunks are abroad on Sunday night.
2) Friends buy you all natural perfume. Real friends help you scrub off all natural "perfume" by
dumping cans of cold tomato sauce over your head.
------------------------------------------------
Afterwards to the story:
Tomato juice mostly covers up the smell of skunk, it doesn't entirely get rid of it. Neither to many of the other remedies for skunkings we've tried, so Carole's bike, jeans and sneakers still have a faint eau de Pepe LePew about them. But all do work to some degree on people, doggies and evironments:
1) the infamous aforementioned tomato juice. Actually any tomato based product will do, except probably ketchup. Of course, considering how much ketchup comes in a bottle, who knows maybe ketchup will work. Of course the only useful amounts of ketchup you're going to find for this special scenario are only sold at places like Costco.
2) 1pt bleach to 4pts water. This does work on non clothing stuff. It works to certain degrees on clothing, but it will make the a weensy bit lighter in the process.
3)Scope. The green kind. Yes, the mouthwash. Don't ask, just pour liberally onto skunked item. Repeat as necessary. I don't know why, but it helps. Just Scope mind you, apparently other mouthwashes don't work!
4) other than that there's no better cure than lots of air circulating and a couple of washes with heavy duty detergent!
Last night I hath passed a milestone in my conversion from diehard concrete pounder to country bumpkin - I have assisted in the cleanup of a skunking. Bleargh.
Carole (my Lady, to those of yous who don't know) works until 11pm and rides home on her bicycle 6 miles from the Hampshire Mall. This is because the PVTA is now on summer schedule and no longer run past 10:30. Kind of inconvenient for those of us that need to work late and are vehicularly challenged, but biking is good exercise and there is a nice long direct bike path from there to the main part of downtown Northampton. You'd think it would be dark and creepy at night, which it is, but considering Carole hasn't been a victim of a random Hadley spork attack yet . . . looks like the only things attacking on the Norwottuck rail trail is the nocturnal wildlife. So here is Carole biking along, when out of nowhere a large skunk darts into the path directly in front of her bike! She rolls over its hind end with the front wheel and manages to swerve aside fast enough to avoid hitting it with the back wheel, which was probably lucky for the skunk because most of Carole's two hundred and change pounds is resting on her back wheel. As it was it just freaked out, and, well did the obvious. Half an hour later Carole arrives home with herself, her bike, and her good work shoes reeking of freshly pissed-off skunk. Austin (our downstairs housemate) and I, who fortunately were awake when she got home, could just about smell her coming.
Skunk musk is one of those special insideous fragrances that can only be combatted by the stench of something equally strong smelling and heinous, which in this case, Austin quickly decided, was tomato juice. Lots of it. But immediately our intrepid trio of the Casita Amarilla (this is what we call our household) was faced with a dire problem. There was not even a molecule of tomato juice in the house. This wouldn't have been much of a problem except that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is still stuck in the 16th century in terms of what can and what can't be open and for how long
on "The Lord's day." No liquor, no smokes (if you're into that sort of thing) and even respectable places that are open 24 hours during the week, like the Super Stop and Shop, for instance, close at midnight during the weekend. And the douchebags wouldn't open up for an emergency purchase of tomato juice. So much for helping out people in need. Not even the department of Public safety could help us in our quest for emergency skunk repair. Instead we probably made the laugh of their evening . . . But anyway, Austin and I doused Carole with bug balm and sat her outside of the house on the lawn so that she wouldn't stench up the rest of the house, and then the two of us set off at 12:35am, to find _something_ somewhere that was open and sold vast quantities of tomato juice and buckets. Nothing in Northampton, like that, even the friggin Sprawl-Farts, I mean, Wal-Marts, were closed on Sundays. Friggin' Provincial Yahoos. So we tried West Springfield since there's a commercial drag there. Nothing open there either. We try Springfield. Heck, it's the closest thing to a big city we've got out here, right? Nope. Much pissed at the inconvenient Theocracy our beloved country is, and using language inappropriate for proper young ladies (not that Austin and I, in our pajama pants, t-shirts, and unkempt hair, resembled anything close to the proper young ladies we scorn on a daily basis), Austin and I, annoyed at haven gotten nowhere after an hour and a half of driving, decided desperately to cross the state line in our search. As soon as we crossed into Connecticut, bingo. There, in Enfield, 30 miles South of home, beautiful to us weary travelers in it's 2am isolation, was a A&P Super Foodmart. AND IT WAS OPEN!
15 minutes later, Austin and I depart CT armed with 12 enormous cans of generic tomato juice and three 10 gallon buckets. We set off for the half hour drive home, where I forced Austin to chug Jolt cola in order to keep her awake and sane on the drive home (I succeeded with the awake part at least, and as for the sane part simply wound up irritating the hell out of her). We arrive home to find a sad, rather bug eaten and cold Carole, who has been patiently waiting for us to come home to rescue her from her own stench for a little over two hours.
One home we get down to brass tacks. Twelve cans of tomato juice must be opened, six of which would go to bicycle and environment repair. Four would go into a bathtub of water for neutralizing Carole herself, and subsequently after working closely with the sources of stench, us as well. Two just to dump over our heads or anything else not thoroughly deskunked. Essentially, another hour was spent in deskunking Carole's bike and the front porch, by scrubbing everything in V8like substances. One hour later we weary Warriors Against Olefactory Assault removed our skunky clothing, put it in a trash can full of diluted tomato goodness, and then ran inside before the mosquitoes or the neighbors could detect our very nude presences. Half an hour later we were all coated in tomato juice, and soap, thoroughly rinsed, and sitting around Austin's apartment, shellshocked from the whole stinky business. Austin and Carole, the lucky wenches, got to call in this morning. I had to teach a Photoshop class at 9am, so I was not happy about having to wake up two hours after I had crashed to rush to work! But It was an experience to be remembered, and now if any of you wildlife explorers happen to meet a pissed off skunk, you'll know what to do.
Morals of this story:
1) Never ride through a well wooded bike path when stupid skunks are abroad on Sunday night.
2) Friends buy you all natural perfume. Real friends help you scrub off all natural "perfume" by
dumping cans of cold tomato sauce over your head.
------------------------------------------------
Afterwards to the story:
Tomato juice mostly covers up the smell of skunk, it doesn't entirely get rid of it. Neither to many of the other remedies for skunkings we've tried, so Carole's bike, jeans and sneakers still have a faint eau de Pepe LePew about them. But all do work to some degree on people, doggies and evironments:
1) the infamous aforementioned tomato juice. Actually any tomato based product will do, except probably ketchup. Of course, considering how much ketchup comes in a bottle, who knows maybe ketchup will work. Of course the only useful amounts of ketchup you're going to find for this special scenario are only sold at places like Costco.
2) 1pt bleach to 4pts water. This does work on non clothing stuff. It works to certain degrees on clothing, but it will make the a weensy bit lighter in the process.
3)Scope. The green kind. Yes, the mouthwash. Don't ask, just pour liberally onto skunked item. Repeat as necessary. I don't know why, but it helps. Just Scope mind you, apparently other mouthwashes don't work!
4) other than that there's no better cure than lots of air circulating and a couple of washes with heavy duty detergent!
