It was a dark and stormy night, the wind howling in the eaves... OK, maybe not but it was dark & I live in NM so the wind could have been howling in the eaves and Hannah had headed outside for her nightly constitution when she started barking her head off. Maggie then raced outside to see what treasures Hannah had encountered and immediately started barking too - the deep, "I'm a bigger dog than I look and will whip your behind if I were braver" barks as opposed to the high-pitched, ear-splitting, "Mom (insert dog name here) has my bone and won't give it back" barks. So out I go to investigate.
I decided that they are barking at our neighbor's dogs, Ruby & Piglet. I am trying to convince them of this fact but they aren't buying it. They get a bit braver now I'm outside with them and advance towards the fence a few feet. By now I know I will not shut them up and they are rousing all the other dogs in the neighborhood so I stoop down to pick up Hannah (the closest mutt I could grab) all the while telling them to shut up it is just Ruby & Piglet - when I look up to find Maggie and notice I am at eye level and about 15 feet from a skunk (Maggie is about 10 ft from it). I snatch up Hannah, scream out: "SH*$&@*& its a skunk" and turn to thurst Hannah in Bryan's arms so I can nab Maggie before she makes a HUGE mistake and finds her brave-gene. But Bryan isn't behind me, he's still running around the house trying to find a flashlight. We girls are on our own.
Knowing if I set Hannah down she'll charge Pepe, I turn on my heel and race to the house all the while yelling for Maggie (who is obviously deaf since she ignored my warnings) to follow us. I shove Hannah in the house, yell at Bryan that its a skunk and not to turn Hans back out and race out to find Maggie - Pepe is grateful for the distraction and turns tail (and yes, it is straight up in the air) and runs, with Maggie running after him. I finally get her distracted enough to come to me, I carefully sniff the air and then snag her too. After both pooches are safely ensconced in the house, Bryan comes downstairs with the flashlight - "What was it", he asked? I'm sure I would have thrown something if it had been handy but I just replied, "a skunk - no worries, the girls chased it away."
We went outside looking for it anyway, sans pups but it had taken advantage of my rantings and made a clean getaway. I will be forever grateful that he/she didn't spray... Lordy... that would have been a mess, especially if he had taken aim when I was staring him in the eyes. Oivee!!!
All's well that ends well I suppose and hopefully our two terrors have convinced him that this is not the yard to visit.
4 comments:
Oh. Hilarious story! I can just picture it all playing out .... LOLOLOL!!!!!!
Yeah, it was sooooo funny. LOL OK, maybe a little, since none of us were sprayed. He was a pretty big skunk too, its been a lllooonnnggg time since I've seen one that close. In TX when I was a kid we had them all the time, one of our farms dogs was a great skunk hunter - no fear, and he certainly got sprayed alot, poor guy.
Oh man, I laughed so hard and so did Michael! I have never seen a skunk up close, so you can only imagine how this city girl would hve responded. Michael has a couple stories on his poor dog and skunks growing up. Ughh.
Well, it is certainly shocking and not something I recommend. YIKES!!! All I could think of was "crap, I don't have enough tomato juice to get the smell out; please don't spray, please don't spray" and "where the heck it Bryan???" (supposedly tomato juice is supposed to remove the smell - we never tried it, we just ostracized poor Pal (our skunk hunting dog) for a week or two)
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