A Stinky Situation — Part III

As I had said yesterday, I called a local wildlife removal service and pleaded with the guy to come out and get this skunk.

He said he could be out around six PM, and I made sure he would do everything we needed: trapping, exclusion, and deodorization.

“Yeah, we do all that,” he assured me.

I was able to concentrate a whole lot better while at work that day, knowing that relief was in sight. When my wife called me on her way home, I let her know what the plan was, and that I’d be home soon too.

When I got into my car, I noticed it smelled like skunk.

“What the heck?” I thought to myself. “Why would it smell in here? The car was in the garage, and that was the only place in the house where it didn’t stink. Did that little pest follow me to work and then spray the vents?” I imagined him clinging to the undercarriage as we drove along, an evil grin on his little fuzzy face.

Since it was Tuesday evening, I swung by to pick up my daughters from their mom’s place before heading home. We always have time together on Tuesday evenings. “Time together” meaning one of them gets on the computer and works on her homework, and the other grabs the phone and disappears into her room.

My younger daughter noticed it right away:

“Dad, the car smells like skunk.”

“Yes, it does indeed. Just wait until we get home,” I said, smiling. “You’ll see just how bad it is.”

The house didn’t smell too bad, actually. All the doors and windows were open when I got there, and my wife had turned on all the fans. So it smelled okay, but it was mighty chilly.

Right in the middle of dinner (naturally), the wildlife removal guy knocked on the door.

Michael of course wanted to hang out with him and watch him do his work.

“Do you wanna see my room?” he asked the man.

“Sorry, little guy. I gotta look for a skunk,” he said.

“I got a leopard!” Michael said, showing him the stuffed leopard (“Perd”, he calls it) he now carries everywhere.

“Michael, I think your sister wants to play with legos. Go find out!” I said, hoping to get him interested in something other than the stranger with the khaki work shirt and traps.

Michael padded quickly inside, giving the trapper a chance to set things up, and me to discuss the details of the job with him.

“I’m going to set up four traps,” he started. “Two in the front, and two in back. I’ll show you how to reset them in case you catch a cat.”

Lovely. We are the proud owners of one of the more curious and thick-skulled cats in the neighborhood. This is the cat whose achievements include getting herself trapped in the refrigerator while my wife was putting away groceries, becoming trapped in between the front door and the outer screen, and taking only 12 months to figure out how her cat door worked. Certainly she’d be the first pest nabbed by the traps.

The guy put bait out for the skunks to follow: marshmallows and special skunk bait. “You can re-bait the traps if necessary, but just don’t use cat food,” he warned me. I wasn’t planning on doing that, actually. Our cat doesn’t need any extra help getting caught.

After he finished setting up the traps, we talked about what I need to do when we catch one, and when he’ll be back next. I paid him for his first visit and escorted him around the side of the house, back to the front yard.

Looking to get back to my dinner, I headed back around the side to the back door since I knew that one was open.

My wife popped her head out, eyes wide.

“Where’s Michael?”

“Huh?” I said. Last I knew, he was inside.

“He went around the front!” She said, alarmed. I hadn’t quite caught on to the need for alarm. I was just in the front, and Michael wasn’t with me.

“Huh?” I said again, even more eloquently than before.

“Go! Go get him!” she said, nearly panicked. My brain refused to allow me to be alarmed given the basic information, but my adrenal system cued off of her emotional state quickly and sent me rushing back around to the front of the house.

On the way I realized that Michael must have escaped out the front door while I was wrapping things up with Mr. trapper, and since he’s probably backing his truck out of the driveway right now, given Michael’s armadillo-like lust for standing in the middle of the street, the guy may very well be backing up over Michael’s little fluffy read head.

Instead, when I got there I saw the poor man sitting in his truck trying to explain to a very chatty Michael that he had to get going. Meanwhile, Michael stood right by the driver’s side door, looking up and grinning and going on and on about his blue blankie and how he’d like to ride in the truck.

I scooped Michael up swiftly and apologized.

We waved goodbye and he was on his way.

That night we slept restlessly, but at least we were assured that the stinky situation would come to an end soon.