Tires, onions and panic
We got a little surprise Tuesday night when we let Ruby out back to do her evening business. For those of who have never been lucky enough to feel the full fury of fresh skunk, let me give you some quick wisdom.
Fresh skunk does not smell anything like the mildly unpleasant musk you occasionally pick up driving down the street. It is insanely intense. Imagine eating a large moist purple onion while standing next to a pile of burning tires and you’re about halfway there.
The tire smell is especially tricky; it seems more like an artificial chemical solvent than anything borne of nature. Because of the solvent reek, in our tizzy we made a bad mental leap: “it’s not skunk, she’s been maced by someone trying to break into the house!” Which led us to our a series of mistakes…
- Do not bring the dog in the house
- Do not pour water over the dog
- Do not call the vet in a panic — they’ll tell you to come in because you sound panicked
- Do not put the nearest set of clothes to go to the vet; these will now be trash
- Do not put the dog in the car
The vet shooed us away as fast as they could and gave us the magic combination to get the stink off the dog (hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, Dawn). But by then the damage was done and the dog was the only thing left on the property that didn’t reek.
When we picked up the elements of the dog-cleaning kit from Safeway, the checkout clerk took one look at our haul and asked us if we had a dog that got hit by a skunk. How’d she know that? Attacks are so common in Oakland this time of year that the recipe was posted in the break room. They left that bit out of the disclosures when we moved over here.
