After a cold and nasty end to the week, Mother Nature graced us with a day that very much resembles spring. Bright, blue sky. Temperatures SOARING above 15-degrees. A warming breeze to dry the morning dew. You can just smell spring in the air, and on Prince Edward Island that means everything smells like shit. I’m not talking about the you can just smell things growing earthy smell here; the kind where you cannot wait to put trowel in hand and begin working the soil. No. I’m talking about the pungent, grab your nose hairs and don’t let go smell of liquid manure that is currently being sprayed in the fields all up and down the road where we live. Ah, the smell of spring - brought to you by Cow Shit.
Spring on PEI also means lots and lots of furry animals out and about, looking for love or just a meal. Of course this means the road kill ratio is quite a bit higher than in winter. Raccoons and ravens, hedgehogs and even a beaver last week all smeared the pavement near our home. There is no more popular road kill on the island, though, than skunk. Competing directly against liquid manure for worst olfactory experience EVER is the ever-aromatic odor of freshly squashed skunk. Mmm, mmm GOOD!
Once, when we lived in Vancouver I took Snickers out for his last walk of the evening. A walk is never just a walk for that dog. A walk is an opportunity to scavenge and forage, to pee on every tree we pass and to dive into every bush in the hopes that his great reward will be a cast-off crust of something with mould. On this particular night he dove under a bush in pursuit of something that was rustling the branches (maybe it’s a steak! was his thought). For his efforts he was richly rewarded with a double shot of skunk juice right in the face. OMG, I have NEVER smelled anything as bad (before moving to PEI and experiencing liquid manure, that is). My eyes watered as I fought my gag reflex and struggled to get the now very freaked out dog home.
Of course the problem when we got home was what to do with the dog? How do you get skunk off the dog without infecting your apartment, not to mention yourself? Mothers have the answer to everything, so while I locked Snickers outside in the vestibule, I made a panicked call to Mom to ask what I should do with him. She quickly came up with the recipe to bathe him that was guaranteed to work. A concoction of dish detergent, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and something else. Well, I only had two of the four ingredients I needed and, desperate to get rid of the stench that was now permeating everything within a 20-km radius, I hightailed it to my local grocery store.
It was 10 o’clock at night and thankfully, unlike PEI, Vancouver has 24-hour, 7-days-a-week grocery stores. Anyway, while I’m there I think “Hey, I’m also out of bread and gee, I could also use some butter, eggs and maybe some of those Dad’s cookies”. So while I’m looking for hydrogen peroxide and whatever that fourth ingredient is, I also picked up some other things. When I hit the checkout stand a little Latino guy is manning the cash. Please know, that when I lived in Vancouver I lived in the West End, a neighborhood that is completely safe for single women, because every guy that lived there was totally gay. I’m not kidding. So, there’s this handsome, Latino, gay cashier scanning my items and as he hits the total button, he wrinkles his nose as he says in the most “Chico & the Man” voice you can imagine “ooh-ooh, something STINKS in here!” I looked him squarely in the eye and said, “Why do you think I’m buying all this gear? I’ve suffered second-hand skunking by my dog.”
I skulk home, hoping against hope that I don’t encounter anyone else, walking directly past the scene of the crime (which still stank by the way). I proceeded to wrangle the 50-lb Beast into the (antique, claw-foot) bathtub for a thorough scrub down. Bear in mind this is a dog that does not get bathed on a regular basis, so any mention of the tub is pure trauma for him and subsequently me.
The recipe my Mom gave me worked as promised. In a matter of minutes Snickers was (mostly) odor-free. Realizing after my conversation with Chico & the Man that I also stunk of skunk I jumped in the shower and doused myself with what remained of the recipe. Head & shoulders, knees & toes, I scrubbed. As soon as I shampooed the last of the recipe into my color-treated hair I knew something had gone terribly wrong. As I washed that skunk right out of my hair I could feel every strand begin to contract. A quick rinse and towel dry, I looked in the mirror and to my absolute HORROR saw that my once luxurious mane of chestnut brown hair was now a mop of yellow, brittle straw, the recipe’s active ingredient, peroxide, having done what bleach does.
So, what lessons did we learn that day, dear Internet? We learned that the Beast doesn’t get more than a 2-foot lead, so as not to have access to unseen varmints. We learned that when your dog gets skunked, he shares the wealth and so do you. We learned that when you shampoo with hydrogen peroxide you bleach you hair. We learned that paying your hairdresser $125 to correct your mistake is worth every. single. penny.
Now, go outside and breathe in some spring!
