My coffee smells like a skunk today. So do my hands, my laptop, my forearm. I can’t smell my own hair, but I’m sure it is skunky too. I’ve showered, shampooed my hair twice, run a soapy loofah over every inch of my body, laundered every stitch of clothing that came near the dog.
We let Olive off leash for the last stretch of our walk home last night. It’s fun watching her enjoy her freedom, and with our house only ten yards away, and it being well past our sleepy town’s bedtime, what could possibly go wrong? For the first 4 seconds she purposefully trots towards home, water, snack, bed.
But that fifth second brings down the house. She spots something in the dark shrub in our next-door neighbor’s front yard, and makes a hard right turn towards it. I think it a bit odd. Suddenly, she is laser focused. What could she possibly have seen that changed her raison d’être?
“Olive, what are you doing? Come back!” I’m trying to do my best stage whisper. I don’t want my voice echoing down the empty street, waking the neighbors.
“OLIVE!” She is running now.
“Olive, NO!”
She ignores me. Srini goes around, on our side of the short fence, so he can see where she is headed. He says he got a flash of something, before it darted away.
An angry, bossy bark, a mad kerfuffle, and then silence. The whole thing takes all of 10 seconds. Olive is now walking back towards me, a little dazed, sobered, almost relieved to have me grab her collar.
“Olive! What the heck was that?!”
I hold on to her this time, and start heading down our driveway. The smell hasn’t hit me yet.
Srini says, “I think she got sprayed. I think that was a skunk.”
In fact, the smell doesn’t really hit me until we start washing her down with a mix of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap. What would we have done before the internet? And when it does, it feels like a blow to the head. But I mostly ignore it. I’m the one who is laser focused now; I’m intent on scrubbing her down.
Olive is weirded out by this bucket bath in the backyard, the whole family fussing over her.
“Bring me some warm water, Aanika, hurry.”
“We need some shampoo.”
“Don’t get this stuff in her eyes.”
“Anjali, give her a treat.”
“Aaaagh!” She shakes off the water all over me.
The chemical bath, followed by a shampoo, and the dog is the cleanest she has ever been. But the house is somehow drenched in skunk. Then begins the laundry. Dog towels, our clothes, her leash and collar, a blanket Aanika had wrapped herself in. The smell must be wafting in from the outside. The skunk is probably still hiding, just feet away from our kitchen.
We got lucky – Dad had just scored a double-pack of hydrogen peroxide at Costco. Covid has made it prized possession. Srini knew Olive had been skunked before we let her inside. The thought of her rolling around on the carpet before getting de-skunked is the stuff of nightmares. And for the duration of the bath, she managed to pull all our heads out of our screens. So there is that little gift.
But the smell! I’m sure it has gotten infused into my blood. I wonder if Olive – her nose thousands of times stronger than humans’ – thinks the same.
Just a few days ago, I was musing over how the animals around us are immune from the stresses of 2020. I was jealous. Not anymore.
