My old roommate James was touring SWVA and camping all three nights of his weekend. Amanda and I had plans of catching up with James and camping somewhere around Bath County, VA. While Amanda and I were hanging out last night, I let the dog out, just like I've done probably millions of times since he has been alive. A couple of minutes after I let him out we could hear his tags jingling louder and more frequent than usual. I thought that maybe he was just running through the yard back to the door. I opened up the back door to let him in, just like I've done probably a million times...only this time something was not right.

Pacino darted through the apartment with his head low and his tail tucked. Amanda said, "I think he has something in his mouth." We followed him around for about two seconds when a smell hit my face that took my breath away. I wish I could describe the smell, but words cannot put into context the smell that now overrun our apartment. Pacino had drool coming out of his mouth and he would shake his head and the drool would fly all over the living room and kitchen. Amanda said, "He's been sprayed by a skunk!" And, unfortunately, she was right. While Pacino was running around and we were running him down, we turned on the light to the back patio and there was the skunk, wandering around, sniffing. This guy wasn't very big, probably the size of a short ferret, but definitely a skunk. 

I immediately took him upstairs to the shower and started dousing him with water in the tub. While smelling around on him, I noticed that the smell was extremely bad under his chin near his mouth which makes me think that the skunk sprayed him in the mouth and was why he was drooling. And I don't blame him, the smell was very close to what I think tear gas would be. It would make your eyes water.

We had to decide if he was going to sleep in the bedroom with us like he normally does, or sleep downstairs so we wouldn't have to smell him. We opted for the bedroom so he wouldn't sleep on the sofa. 

So this morning, we got up, had breakfast (in a house that smells like a mixture of burnt hair, garlic and popcorn) then went on to Pet Smart to get some skunk odor remover. We had rent a carpet cleaner to shampoo the carpets, throw away a bunch of towels, wash a bunch of clothes and wash Pacino one more time with the skunk odor remover. We've treated him kind of like the village leper today. He has been quarantined to the back yard while his odor remover stuff dries. He doesn't smell as bad as he did last night or even this morning, but he still stinks.

Where does James come into this? Well, we didn't get to go camping, instead we had to clean thanks to Pepe LePew and my "cat" chasing, skunk breath dog. 

Happy Labor Day!