Oh my word. I have never, in all my life, smelled anything worse than our dog Daisy, with eyes streaming, snotting all over the porch, begging for help at 9pm after being sprayed by a skunk.
I was in some pretty heavy disbelief for a second. What is going on? Is this really happening right now? This can't be real. This happens to other people, not us, right? We have smelled skunks a handful of times in the area, but we certainly don't have any living here! Is this a nightmare?
Yes. It was a nightmare all right.
Daisy got sprayed by a skunk right in the face. Thanks, 2020. Damn all these country critters!!
Sam and I grabbed the dawn dish soap and scrubbed Daisy like she had never been scrubbed before. Of course, this first wash hardly did a thing. Little did we know (as I do now), that you should try to wipe and blot up the skunk oil with paper towels first. Otherwise you are literally just scrubbing the skunk oils deeper into the hair. *sigh*
I have learned so much about skunks recently. Against my will.
Needless to say, poor Daisy had to sleep outside in the kennel that night. The next morning I was desperate to rid her of the smell. Sam went to work (how dare he leave me in this time of need! HAHA), so I was flying solo on this deskunking mission. I tried everything except for tomato products (she has sensitive skin and I couldn't bare the thought of hurting her delicate skin with acidic tomatoes!). I was a mess. I was crying, cussing, and smelled like skunk myself. After 3 more washes, I finally had to give up due to exhaustion. I needed to wait until Sam got home from work with an actual skunk wash. Thankfully, the skunk wash finally did the job with a 95% satisfaction rate. There was a little bit of a linger, but that's just the way that it goes.
After that drama, the paranoia of a repeat spray was more than I could take. I was on edge. The dogs were not allowed to go outside between dusk and dawn. They were not allowed to be outside alone. And they were certainly NOT allowed to go down to the barn, which, as it turns out, was where the skunk was living.
And where it would die.
We set a trap and waiting patiently. Turns out it helps if you set the trap correctly. After a failed attempt on night one, we caught a skunk on night two! I was able to ever so carefully walk up to it with a kiddie pool in front of me to throw/place the pool over it until Sam got home from work to shoot it.
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