Just before heading off to bed Friday evening (around midnight), hubby let the dogs out for one last piddle. I was still sitting on the couch in front of the television, working on cut-outs for this year's Christmas cards... Wasn't planning to see shut-eye until I had that step completed...
All of a sudden, I heard the little dog barking his angry bark, and hubby franticly commanding, or was that pleading, for him to, "Come." Meanwhile, the big dog ran in past hubby like a bullet and hunkered down in her dog bed. How odd.
Absentmindedly, I glanced up to see what was going on, and at the same time my nose began to convulse... Hubby had saved one dog from a visiting skunk without realizing the other one had already been sprayed with a full-frontal, nose-to-tail, bullseye of a hit! Pure, fresh skunk musk was EVERYWHERE!!!
Now, if you live in rural Maine, roadkill skunk fragrance is fairly commonplace, but this fresh stuff was unlike anything we'd ever experienced before -- our eyes... our tongues & throats... the nausea... and just think, it was still secondhand! The poor dog - frothing at the mouth, drooling puddles, heaving, blinded, and even worse, in her time of "need," banished back outside to the porch in the subfreezing cold.
Hubby had to hurriedly get dressed and head off to the grocery store for items needed to concoct some "skunk antidote" -- a chemist's recipe I cut out of a magazine several years ago, and filed away "just in case."
Mix together:
1 quart hydrogen peroxide
1/4 cup baking soda
1 teaspoon dish soap
Use IMMEDIATELY -- Avoid animal's eyes. Rub deep into fur. Rinse well with clean water.
This concoction loses effectiveness in less than an hour, so you have to mix it up fresh every time. The recipe also cautions DO NOT SHAKE or COVER. Additionally, it can be used to wash/neutralize just about anything the musk has contacted.
Hubby had returned and was out out washing the dog by 2 am... a task made difficult by the freezing temperatures. The antidote was actually turning to ice as fast as he was applying it to the dog's fur. My job, by the way, was to keep filling buckets with really warm water for the rinsing.
The good thing is, the recipe worked like a charm and the odor, on the dog really was neutralized. She then got warmed and dried with a blow dryer, and sent downstairs to sleep on her other, when the family is away, dog bed. Not quite the "love" she probably needed, but better than what she probably deserved. (A terrier mix, Dixie thinks everything on earth has been put here for her entertainment, and shows zero caution in "making friends." Two months ago it was a porcupine...)
The house, however, a different story... The contaminated dog bed had been tossed outside pronto, but the damage was already done. With no possible way to wash EVERYTHING, we've been left living with it. So, so, so, so gross! By the end of Saturday my eyes were too sore to even touch, my throat and tongue felt raw, my head was throbbing with a "sick" ache, and I'd remained semi-nauseous all day. Maybe I should have spent the day "out," but I knew if I didn't use the day for Christmas cards, they'd not get done...
Early evening, I did manage to take a "breather" ~ha ha to wander through AC Moore for an hour or so... Didn't buy one thing, but ran into smART Cookie, Peggy Lamb, and at a distance, poured out my tale of woe... Very sympathetic, she told me hanging fresh basil helps... I'd happily have tried it, but being winter, this year's basil crop is long gone...
To date the stink remains. It has lessened to be more like the familiar roadkill variety, but it remains. Of course, my nose is now "broken," so I can't really tell exactly how bad it is. I do know if you leave the house for any time at all, you REALLY notice it when you come back... and Eli felt humiliated at school on Monday -- Kids kept asking "What's that smell?" By the end of the day they had figured out what and who, so have deemed him "Skunk Boy"... and Tuesday evening, Mark and I attended Eli's holiday concert at school, and the couple sitting ahead of us kept wrinkling their noses and mentioning the "odor" to one another...
But what concerns me the most? The lasting impression I'm apt to make at my annual ob/gyn exam tomorrow??? No, it's whether or not the smell embedded itself into those Christmas cards I made over the weekend and mailed this week... Further confirmation to hubby that the creatures he knows as "stampers" are, indeed, a warped lot.
On that note, here is LAST year's official card:
5.25" square card base, ABC-Holly Wreath stamp set, gold embossing powder on slightly textured Christmas green cardstock. 1/8" gold brad "berries", and a glitzy, knot-only ribbon bow. For the gold lines... a gold gel pen over pre-scored lines (made with Score-it).
Just call me Pepe,
Susan T.
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