Yay For Animals!

We now interrupt your regular programming of cruise pimping for a brief interlude of stink.

My roommate and I have developed this regular exchange of words every time we run into each other at the end of each work day. He asks me how my day went and almost always answer with “neutral”, because really, neutral is the kind of person I am. On rare days I might answer with “slightly better than neutral” or “slightly worse than neutral” and then I’ll have to explain the amazing events of the day that knocked me slightly off my neutral rock. Today when he got home from work and asked about my day, the answer was “more neutral than ever”. If only it had stayed that way.

I spent the evening tonight watching TV and taking all my turns on my facebook games and it struck me that I hadn’t been in the hot tub in a LOOOOONG time. Like months. Although I had been keeping up the chemicals, I just hadn’t found the time to get in and enjoy it lately. At about 9:30 pm, I figured I would give myself a little relaxing break from the Olympics and jump in the hot tub and I brought the dogs outside in the backyard with me so they could enjoy the night air.

As I’m sitting there enjoying the comfort of the hot water and stretching all my limbs and cracking my neck, the dogs come running by me in a hysterical barking panic and run for the gate right around the corner from the hot tub. I watch them go running by and as I begin yelling at them to quiet down, I see them suddenly jump back from their course afraid of whatever it was that was in the corner of the yard by the gate. They continue to aggressively bark at whatever is there, but take a more cautious stance. All of this is happening within a few feet of me, but I can’t see what is around the corner. It’s close and I can hear hissing (?)… wait no… spraying! Suddenly the air begins to smell like… huh? …its rotten garlic (?) …no wait it’s burning rubber (?) My eyes begin watering. Is it a skunk? I can’t see and I’m well… not really decent and am not at all interested in investigating the existence of a possible skunk only five feet away from me in my hot tubbing attire.

I am now freaking out. OK…I can’t let the dogs continue to corner the skunk and keep getting sprayed or even worse attacked. I jump out of the tub and run for the door and call the dogs in as fast as possible. They come running and I’m now realizing that my house smells like… underarm sweat(?). I’m not really understanding what’s happening. I rushing to get my clothes on and thinking… it doesn’t really smell like skunk. Maybe it’s not. May some other animal sprayed them. But what other animal could produce a smell this strong and the smell of forty day old donkey piss (?)?

I call across the house to my roommate, who is locked in his room, to see if he smells it too. I mean, maybe I’m just imaging the smell of overly used, and rarely washed clown shoes (?). “Do you smell something?” I yell. “Yes,” he screams back. “Is it marijuana?” I explain to him my episode outside and we both agree it can only be a skunk, and that apparently in such high concentrations we are just believing to smell like something else, you know, something like camel testicles after a hundred mile non-stop journey across the dessert(?).

While my roommate began to look up recipes for skunk odor removal, I called the 24-hour emergency pet clinic to see if they needed to come in for any possible skin problems from the spray (and secretly hoping they would tell me to bring them in so they could wash the odor off them). The nurse gave me a recipe for odor removal which was comprised of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap. She told me to wash the dogs each twice. Ok…it’s now 10pm at night, I have to work in the morning and I have to give four dog baths to uncooperative dogs with inadequate washing facilities, only after I go to the store to buy a lifetime supply of peroxide? FAN FUCKING TASTIC!

I run to the store, only to realize I forgot my wallet, run back home, realize that I left my wallet in my pants that I just washed, grab my sopping wet wallet holding my nose as I run through the house, trying to keep the dogs from touching me, and run back to the store, knowing that I already smell as bad as the dogs and will have to suffer glaring looks of disgust as I walks through the store carrying 6 unmistakable brown bottles of hydrogen peroxide, 6 unmistakeable golden boxes of Arm & Hammer, and 6 lovely bottles of air freshener. After l slap my goods down on the counter and the clerk looks down trying to figure out why anyone would pick out the exact combination of items I had, he gives me a strange look as he begins scanning the items. I respond to his glance with, “Don’t ask… we’re having a very strange party.”

I then come home, nearly puking as I am struck by the smell of my house when I walk through the door. I fight with one dog to get him in the tub. I wash him, once with the magic peroxide concoction, then with my brand new bath and body works shampoo, then again with concoction, then again with expensive shampoo. I let him shake out all the water (all over the bathroom) and repeat the fight with dog number two. I take the carpet out of the front room that dogs had been rolling around on immediately after the skunk attack in an attempt to get the skunk piss off, and throw it on front porch outside. I take of all my clothes and throw them on the front porch outside and replace them with new ones. My guess is I’ll never wear those stink ass clothes again. I may have a bonfire tomorrow.

I run around putting bowls of baking soda in every room of the house and spray liberally with air freshener. I end my evening by pounding on my roommates door and screaming “WELL BELOW NEUTRAL NOW, ROBERT! WEEEEELLLLLL BELOW NEUTRAL!”

You can also get Jester’s perspective of the evening here, because I was chatting with him when the whole thing was over