Monday, February 8, 2010

Pepe Le Pew is no longer cute.

Guest blogger,Paul, gives a rundown of the events of this morning. 
Jill-

We had an interesting experience at about 5 this morning.  A series of screams, shrieks, and cries came from outside between the bedroom-bathroom wall and the fence, or somewhere underneath the bathroom.  This fit was followed by what sounded like an animal in the bathroom.... I went into the bathroom to investigate and was immediately overcome by an extremely strong wave of skunk odor.  While I was in the bathroom I could hear what was presumably a skunk frantically scratching at the underside of the bathtub.  Eventually the clawing and shrieking waned and we were left with a very stinky house.  So far as what likely happened, I would guess that either two skunks were fighting since it is the start of their mating season, or a skunk was attacked by some sort of predator.

It turns out that skunk scent up close is amazingly powerful.  I had not realized how potent skunk's scent can be, e.g. as I tried to fall back to sleep there was a burning in my nose and eyes despite the fact that the skunk did not actually get into the house.  It is so powerful that Emily could still smell it on her bag when she arrived at work.  For the time being we have sealed off the bathroom and opened all of the windows in an attempt to contain and eliminate the smell.

Recently, we spotted a skunk on the driveway on our way to work and we have frequently smelled skunk scent in the air.  I am curious if we have a skunk den in the crawl space under the house.  Another concern is that there may actually be a dead skunk in the crawl space or flooring of the house, in which case in a few days we will be overwhelmed with a different stench.

For the moment I think we are going to do our best to air out the premises and hope that there is not a dead skunk in or under the house.  I thought you would like to be aware of the latest in case this develops into a bigger problem.

Best-
Paul