Skunk Hunting

Before I start... lol yesterday's post was pure fiction. 99.9 percent of what I write is truth and fact, that post was not... I was in a funky mood and felt like weaving a big fat one. Those people in the pictures are not my family, nor do I know them. If you had a great aunt Beatrice, chances are real solid that I did not know her. No one in my family was named Cletus, if you've got a Crazy Crotch Cletus in your family, I'm sure he was a fine fellow and practiced proper hygiene and had great table manners. I apologize for leading you down a rabbit hole in your search for limbs on your family tree.

Egads...

Okay, this is a long one and it's 100 percent fact. The people in it are real, it happened and no names have been changed to protect anyone's innocence, because no one is innocent in this house. Ever. A couple of y'all were disappointed that it was left out of this post. Well save that disappointment for your wedding night, 'cause here's the skunk story.

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The night before Sal and I were married is an evening that will live on for all of us here in the Weber household. It all started as a normal enough warm summer night, everyone making preparations for the big day, I was getting ready to leave to go back to my house when Jake came burning in the house with the news that a Possum was hanging out in the backyard. Now there had been a problem with something getting the chickens and eggs, but I was pretty well focused on just about everything else in the whole wide world except errant possums. So I did the old "clang the possum hand off" and I told Jake to take his ball bat and pop said possum on the noggin, thereby making him miss Christmas and saving aforementioned chickens to live for another day. Jake wasn't real hot on this idea, he was thinking more along the lines of getting a gun and blowing the ugly right off the overgrown rat. The up close, personal contact just wasn't getting it for little Jake.

I've never actually had a possum bite me, I had one make a fairly valiant effort once when it lunged at me and bit a stick on the ground beside my foot instead. Seems possums have some pretty poor vision. I yelled just the same so he'd think he'd gotten a mess of me. It's easy to fool 'em that way, not too smart you know. Anyway I digress, just wanting to get the task out of the way, I walked out in the backyard with the ball bat, Jake in tow, and there was the possum headed, as only a possum can head, to a hole in the corner of the barn wall. AH HA! Said I, now I've got him. So around to the big gate door of the barn, Jake still on my heels at least a good half step behind me, now not wanting to miss any single piece of this pie, and into the darkness of the barn. Now Jake in his tiny little youthful years must have sensed something very wrong about this whole situation, and he stayed in the gateway, close enough to be where the action was, but ready to bail if the case called for it.

I poked around in the barns darkness, leaving the light off so I wouldn't scare the possum and suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I caught a bit of movement. Slowly I raised the bat, getting ready to let fly, tensed my muscles and... HOLY SMOKES! SON OF A HAIRY TRUCK DRIVER!!! I stopped midswing with an audible screeching sound. (I'd never screeched out loud before), SKUNK! I yelled SKUUUNNNNNKKK! and headed for the gate door. Jake, in the wisdom that children seem to intuitively possess at times, had started running and from out in the middle of the yard I heard his voice. "What is it?" I really thought I'd explained that already. For elbow macaroni and flying catguts Jake, (I've changed a few of the words here) it's a skunk... the possum has become a skunk.

So here we are, a man and a small boy, standing in the backyard in the dark, with a bat, breathing heavily, staring at the barn.

Jake: You alright?

Me: Yeah.
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Jake: What happened to your shirt?

I look down at where my sleeve used to be, but now was only arm.

Me: I dunno, it was there a minute ago.

Jake: Do you think the skunk got it?

Me: I don't think they go for the sleeve Jake, I must have caught it on a nail or something when I walked outta the barn.

Jake: You mean when you flew outta the barn!

I excused him, he was only a small boy, his eyes weren't mature enough to really see real clearly yet.

So NOW it's time for the gun. I go back in the house and get a rifle while Jake animatedly tells everyone what's transpired so far. I grab a flashlight and hand it to Jake and tell him he's the light man.

The plan now is to dispatch the skunk with a bullet in the noggin and hope that he doesn't relax too much. I tell Jake that his job is to blind the skunk with the flashlight, while the skunk is stunned by the light, I'll take him out.

Jake will not enter the barn.

His manner with the flashlight is to stand outside the barn, with his arm and flashlight sticking in the barn and wave it around like it's the disco barn or something. Everytime I tell him to hold it still he points it in my eyes and says "What?" Good Lord, I'm blind in a barn with a live skunk and 12 year old comedian outside. Finally he gets the skunk lined up with the light, I take aim and it's all over. No smell. Us 1, Skunk 0.

Then Pepe Le Pew relaxes.

A smell wafts over our little place in the still, damp night air... and hangs there. It hangs there for days, for weeks, for a couple months. We put lime in the barn, we cleaned it up, scooped it out, limed it some more. People driving by asked if someone hit a skunk in road or what the heck happened.

Somewhere along the way of the evening, I killed the possum, that started the whole melee. The next day, the day of the wedding, Jake, being the little mortician that he aspired to be at that point in his life, buried the skunk and possum in the same hole that a few days later he'd use for a chicken also. A resourceful and well thought out grave digging if there ever was one.

Thank heavens neither one of us got sprayed that night... I'm afraid it woulda put a damper on the wedding festivities. It was bad enough as it was with the smell in the yard.