Red Letter Day

I love living in the country. While I was raised within the city limits of a small town, our environment was still fairly rural and my grandparents lived on a farm so I have always considered myself a country girl. I am beginning to suspect, however, that the years of city-living I've had over the past twenty years have softened me up too much.

Yesterday at the pre-dawn hour of 5:30, I took my dogs out for their morning potty break and sniff session. Our biggest one, Buster (who has the personality to match his name), took off after something in the dark. Buster is an 8-lb. Chihuahua who thinks he's a pit bull. There was a huge ruckus and I decided to go investigate thinking he'd maybe actually caught one of the wild cats that hangs around our bird feeders. Wrong. It was not a nice kitty. It must have looked kind of like a kitty to bird-brained Buster in the dark, but it was the devil in disguise. It was Pepe LePeue on steroids.

Oh heavens. I got close enough for my nose to tell me the story and I turned tail and beat it back to the house. The other two dogs (who have more than 3 brain cells) followed right along. They didn't want any part of this dust-up. Buster was on his own as far as they were concerned. There's fraternal loyalty and then there's stupidity.

I got them in and finally Buster comes dragging back to the porch looking shocked and appalled. His expression said it all - "What the heck WAS that thing? And how did it arm itself with pepper spray? Cats are supposed to run and then you get a nice chase in but this thing zapped me!" Poor Buster looked like a police academy cadet who had just undergone the pepper spray training exercise. His eyes were red and swollen, his chest and ears were cherry red.

My sympathy was only half-hearted, though, because I knew now I had to clean up this eight-pound mass of stink. Then I committed a cardinal sin - I brought him inside. Big, big mistake. Not only did I then have a contaminated dog but the house was soon an EPA Supersite, too. The husband comes downstairs clutching a wash rag over his face, gagging and saying "what are you doing???"

I guess my old vet-tech mindset had kicked in and I wasn't thinking that skunk smell permeates EVERYTHING. Those molecules are relentless. I had cleaned up enough skunked dogs when working for the vet as a teenager and I wasn't thinking "house" but rather "what was that deskunkifier recipe??" It had been twenty-five years since I'd last made a batch.

The rest of the story is a lesson in hazardous material handling. The house was unlivable for the rest of the day. Lucky for me, I had to drive 200 miles yesterday to pick up my son from grandma's house so I was out until afternoon. I stuck Buster in the basement, turned on the big house fan (1948 a/c) and left. Of course, those molecules were everywhere - in my hair, my clothes, my nose, and my purse. I finally stopped at a McDonalds and transferred the contents of my new leather purse to a Wal-mart bag and tossed the purse in the dumpster. It was a total loss. I rolled down all the windows in the Denali and put the seat heater on so I could see to drive without the fumes tearing my eyes too much. Ever drive 78 mph in 42-degree weather with all the windows down? Not fun.

When we got back to the house yesterday afternoon, it was possible to be in the house but we were all dripping Visine every fifteen minutes like dope heads and burning every candle we can find. Everything made of cloth has to be washed now. I want to kiss whoever decided to put Febreeze in Tide and Downy.

And to top off this lovely Red Letter Day in our household - Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Good God.