A Stinky Situation

Two Fridays ago, our morning started exceptionally early — so early, it actually started Thursday night. 

But, that was because it wasn’t a normal Thursday. After we got home from Bible study, and put the kids to bed, and made a Peacock account, and routed Taylor’s computer through the TV, we settled down for an extremely rare event: we watched a movie — an entire movie. 

Taylor and I are not movie people. In fact, we have entered a movie theater together only twice. I dislike being shushed when I talk during the film; Taylor dislikes my near-constant analysis of plot lines, character arcs, and overall narrative quality. Watching movies at home alleviates the former problem, but not the latter. In addition, l can rarely sit still for the length of an entire movie, so their presence in our house has all but vanished.  

However, this was no ordinary movie — it was Psych 2: Lassie Come Home. The Psych series harkens back to an earlier, grittier time in our lives (i.e. the seven months that Taylor and I dated), so it will always have a special place in our hearts. 

(As an aside, I would give Psych 2 a 9/10 rating for character integrity and allusions and a 5/10 rating for plot and narrative development.) 

Anyway, because this series is so special to us, we stayed up a wee bit later than we should have. With our cheese plate intermission and [mandatory] post-movie analysis, we didn’t fall asleep until nearly midnight-thirty (which was, technically, Friday morning). 

Australis cried for her usual morning feeding a little before 4am. Uncharacteristically, Taylor silently slid out of bed and went to retrieve her. (Usually, it’s less work to get her myself than it is to rouse my sleeping husband.) I heard him trudge the dozen-odd steps to our spare room, which currently serves as Taylor’s home office, my junk storage room, Bo’s library, and Aza’s bedroom. 

After Taylor tucked Aza in beside me, he sniffed loudly and mumbled, “<something something> track <something>.”

“What?” 

“I’m going to go track down that smell!”

I suddenly identified the strong odor to which my husband was referring. “Oh, don’t bother, babe. It’s just skunk.”

Taylor: <grunts in recognition>

He returned to bed, and I nursed Australis until she fell back asleep. I slid out of bed, returned her to her playard, and tiptoed back to my room. Nevertheless, her cries split the nighttime stillness almost immediately.

Sliding back under the covers, I whispered, “I think she’ll probably fall back asleep.”

Taylor: <grunts sleepily>

Within a few minutes, my prediction proved correct. Australis had returned to sleep, and I wasn’t far behind. Then, suddenly, something jolted me right out of my half-slumber. That something was the loud, throaty bark of our Great Pyrenees mix, Mache (sounds like “McKee”).

“Oh my gosh, I left the dog outside,” Taylor groaned. 

He wearily rose to retrieve her, while I snuggled further into bed and thought, I hope she doesn’t wake anyone up. Or, at least, that no one knows she belongs to us.

A dozen seconds later, and Mache let out another series of bellows. My eyes snapped open a second before I heard Taylor’s panicky summons of, “Babe? I could really use your strategizing skills right now!”

A terrifying theory bloomed in my subconscious, and my nose supported the hypothesis. I hopped out of bed and ran to the backdoor. 

The stench was overpowering, but especially to Taylor. He stood outside in only his underwear, the porch light faintly illuminating his sour expression. Then, with one sentence, he confirmed my worst fear.

“She got skunked.”

“Ugh,” I moaned. 

“Can you grab me a light? I think the skunk is still in the yard.”

As I grabbed my phone, another round of barking pealed out into the night. I ran back to Taylor with trepidation.

Even before he accepted the light, he confirmed, “The skunk is still in the yard, and Mache just attacked it and got sprayed again, like a DUMMY HEAD.” 

(Oh, the language habits one develops with kids.)

Mache stood near the door with her back to me. As I watched, she growled and made a lunge toward the back of our shed. 

“MACHE!” Taylor barked. 

The dog slowed, but didn’t stop. Taylor made a bid to grab her, then seemingly thought better of it and just yelled her name even louder. To her credit, Mache halted, then turned and skulked back to the door. 

I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Can we just leave it until the morning?”

Alas, one look at Mache’s face shut down that line of questioning. Her hair was oiled against her skin, dirt coated her entire body, and tears streamed from her eyes, which were mere slits against the meager light. Leaving her until morning would be tantamount to animal abuse — plus, the skunk was still in the yard, so the situation could really only get worse. 

“Wait, nevermind,” I concluded lamely. 

Taylor: <grunts in agreement>

For a few seconds, we stood in silence, assessing our pitiful pup. Under normal circumstances, she’s a beautiful pooch with soulful brown eyes and ethereal ivory hair. (You can read more about Mache in When Fur Babies Get Supplanted, If You Give a Kid a [Quinoa-Spinach-Apple] Meatball…, and The Birth of Borealis: Part I.)

Taylor rubbed his crinkled nose, then asked, “Should I just have her go straight to the bath?”

“NO!” I shouted. “That is literally the number one thing they tell you not to do.”

[Note: Sites like this one attest to the truth of this counsel, but my mom and I learned the hard way when her dog got sprayed a decade ago, back in Oklahoma.]

Taylor shrugged. “I could shoot the skunk?” 

“Also no! That wouldn’t even fix anything!”

Taylor sighed audibly. “Ok, well, what do we do then? Also, Australis is up.” 

Indeed, she was. The tenuous victory of her return to sleep was undone by our frantic conference just feet from her room. (Granted, our house is so small that everywhere is “just feet from her room”.)

I sighed. “Yeah, I’ll go get her. But you’re the one with the phone —  why don’t you use it for, I don’t know, what a phone is used for?”

I left Taylor to Google “dog got skunked” while I went to get Australis. She was standing against the edge of her playard, crying piteously. 

“Oh shush, you’re fine,” I consoled. Sure enough, she calmed as soon as I plucked her up and planted her on my left hip. 

While I waited for Taylor to announce his plan, I ran downstairs to our storage room to investigate our supplies. No tomato juice, but a dozen dented cans of whole/diced/stewed tomatoes that we’ve accrued from a variety of sources. I carried four cans back upstairs, realizing as I did that I had left the basement door open, and the skunk smell had rapidly diffused into the stairwell. I hoped the odor would dissipate before our roommates woke up. 

[Note: I discovered later that our roommates had, unfortunately, slept with the window open that night, so a smelly stairwell was a minor inconvenience by comparison.]

“Hey, do you want me to blend up these tomatoes to make tomato juice?” I called through the screen door. 

By that point, Taylor had located some relevant information.

“No. Apparently tomato juice is pretty hit-or-miss. Do we have any peroxide? We need a quart of that, a quarter cup of baking soda, and a teaspoon of dish soap.” 

“Ok, I’ll put that together, I guess.”

Still holding Australis, I funneled approximate amounts of the necessary ingredients into an empty spray bottle. I screwed back on the nozzle, and boom! I had an instant, homemade skunk odor removal spray. I was quite proud of myself. 

“Ok, is the skunk still back there?” I queried. 

“Yeah, I think so. Should we wash her in the front?” 

“Yeah, I’ll meet you out there.”

“Do you want to get her leash?”

I imagined the additional ordeal of washing Mache’s fabric leash. “Um, no. I think she’ll stay by us.”

“Oh-kaaaay. I hope you’re right!” 

I refrained from retorting, I’m always right. 

Australis and I beat Taylor out front. He was having a difficult time persuading Mache to abandon the verminous threat, but once he wrestled the carabiner “lock” off our front gate and flung it wide, the illusion of freedom was sufficiently tantalizing to draw our dog into the front yard. She slunk along the driveway before making a hasty bid for the street. 

“MACHE!” I bellowed. 

“Quiet!” hissed Taylor. “Do you want Davis and Marjorie to see you naked?” 

I glanced down. Admittedly, I was wearing only an old pair of cheekster panties, and we were in full view of the house across the street. “Whatever. They’re probably asleep.” 

“They have a six-week-old. They’re probably awake.” 

“Well, they’re probably not looking out the window, and also I think they’ve seen me nurse before anyway.”

Taylor: <grunts in irritation> “Could you try to be quiet, regardless?” 

I shrugged, then loudly stage-whispered, “Mache!” 

But, my repeated summons was hardly necessary. By that point, our wretched pup had abandoned her bid for the street and instead joined us on our dead front lawn. (Lacking artificial irrigation, our grass is only green for approximately two weeks at the beginning of May.)

“Ok, Mache, you’re not going to like this,” Taylor warned. He straddled Mache and cinched his knees tight against her sides. She strained against his grip, but my husband apparently has thighs of steel. After getting situated above the dog, he held out my phone and asked, “Can you hold the light so I can see?” 

I held Australis with my left hand and the magic potion spray bottle with my right, so the short answer was “no”. At Taylor’s request, though, I managed to shift my daughter higher onto my hip, freeing up a hand. Taylor stuck the still-flashlight-enabled phone into that hand, and Aza immediately tried to gnaw on the device. 

“This is great already,” I quipped. 

Taylor: <grunts impatiently> “Ok, spray her up. Avoid her eyes, through.” 

I aimed for the dog’s neck and squeezed the trigger, then deflated when nothing happened. 

“I guess the baking soda isn’t fully dissolved?”

Taylor shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter why it’s not working. I just need you to unscrew the top and pour some into my hands, then.”

A few seconds and some fancy maneuvering later, I dribbled a bit of the peroxide-sodium-bicarbonate-Dawn mixture into Taylor’s cupped palms.

He transferred the liquid to the top of Mache’s head and worked a small section into a lather. As he leaned over, his hair fell forward and dangled treacherously close to the dog’s defiled fur. 

“Wait!” I commanded. “Let me put up your hair.” 

Taylor paused expectantly. 

I looked back and forth among Australis, the spray bottle, my iPhone, and Taylor’s hair. “Um, I guess I’ll have to use my hair tie,” I realized after a few seconds. “And I’ll have to set the girl down.”

Taylor: <grunts in agreement>

Mache whimpered softly, which galvanized me to action. In rapid succession, I placed the bottle and phone on my car, lowered Australis to the sidewalk, and yanked my hair out of its nighttime messy bun. 

Taylor obligingly tilted his head toward me, but it’s surprisingly difficult to do someone else’s hair if you’re out-of-practice. It took me three tries to capture all of his shoulder-length hair into a single ponytail, and by then, Australis had crawled onto the grass, risen to her pajama-clad feet, and started to reach for Mache’s noxious face. 

“Aza, no!” Taylor and I shouted. If Davis and Marjorie were awake, they would definitely be peeking out their windows at this point. 

I fended Australis off with one foot and nearly toppled over as I pulled the hair tie into one last loop. With both feet back on solid dead grass, I scooped my daughter up and retrieved the bottle and phone. 

“Alright, I’m ready!” I announced unnecessarily.

Taylor: <grunts long-sufferingly> “Ok, pour me more soap.”

For the next several minutes, we worked in near-silence. The initial adrenaline rush was beginning to wear off, and I was feeling increasingly more jet-lagged — you know, as though I had woken up about four hours too early. I groggily poured the soapy peroxide into Taylor’s hands, and he vigorously scrubbed Mache’s face, neck, and head (careful to avoid her eyes). Australis became ever more leaden in my left arm, which is, thankfully, accustomed to carrying children for prolonged periods of time. 

Eventually, Taylor decided, “Ok, I think it’s time to rinse her.” 

I exchanged the bottle for the hose spray nozzle and aimed at Mache.

“You’ll probably have to hold her in place,” I warned.

Indeed, he did. Taylor wrestled the dog into place while I attempted to point both the light and water at my dog. I wasn’t always successful. By the time Taylor announced, “Alright, I think that’s good,” both he and Mache were thoroughly soaked. 

“Time to go inside?” I asked. 

Taylor nodded wearily. “Now we just wash her with the rest of the mix, and then just soapy water afterwards, if we’re out of peroxide.” 

[Note: We were indeed out of peroxide. In fact, a subsequent trip to King Soopers suggested that we were not alone in our peroxide-less situation.]

I sheltered Australis as Mache shook, then followed the dog and Taylor back inside. 

“Bath time!” I commanded. 

Mache looked at me, flattened her ears, and cowered on the living room rug. 

“You bad dog!” I yelled, which was a bit unfair. After all, few dogs actually want to bathe, and Mache especially has no concept of what it takes to clean up skunk oil. Nevertheless, I grabbed her by the scruff and dragged her up and toward the bathroom, Australis squealing all the while. 

Taylor waited for us in the tub. He had grabbed the spray bottle that I had forgotten, and had left his sodden undies in a corner of the bathroom. [Note: I apologize to my readers for the impropriety, although if we’re being honest, Taylor is the last family member to be fully nude in one of my blog posts.]

Mache reluctantly stepped into the tub, then submitted to even more scrubbing and rinsing. 

“Why is she so dirty?” I asked. “Like even her butt. The skunk didn’t spray there.”

Taylor laughed mirthlessly. “As soon as she got sprayed, she rolled in dirt like crazy. Which makes sense, I guess. I mean, if it’s that overpowering to us, how much worse is it for an animal whose primary sense is smell?” 

“Yeah,” I sagely agreed. 

“Anyway, can you make some more shampoo?” 

“Like dog shampoo? It’s right there,” I answered, gesturing to the corner shelf. 

Taylor: <grunts in frustration> “No, like more soap mix to use as shampoo.” 

“Well, then why didn’t you say, ‘Please mix more soapy water?’” I snapped. 

“I don’t know, maybe because I thought it was obvious that we’ve been using soapy water, and that we’re now almost out?” 

“Whatever. Fine.”

I carried Australis into the kitchen and mixed up another quart of watered-down soap, stirring in a bit of baking soda for good measure. By now, my daughter’s weight was positively unbearable on my left arm, and my own body was feeling leaden, too. It felt like the gravity in our house had tripled over the course of ten minutes. I knocked against a wall on my way back to the bathroom, handed off the soap bottle, and mumbled, “Ok, I’m going to try to nurse her back down.” 

Taylor: <grunts in acknowledgment>

I stumbled back to my bed and lay down to nurse Australis. As I heard Taylor continue the scrub-rinse-and-repeat process, I actually found myself thinking, You know, maybe skunk doesn’t even smell that bad…. Is this really worth all the work? — which is how you know that I was truly exhausted.

Alas, Australis refused to nurse down. She bit my nipple with her twin puppy teeth, then giggled as I shrieked. 

“I am done with you,” I hissed — perhaps uncharitably. She is a baby, after all.

I rose, and we returned to the bathroom. There wasn’t much else I could do while my daughter remained awake. 

I immediately noticed an issue with the tub. “Put the drain cover on!” I yelled. “You’re letting all her hair down the drain!”

“Whatever,” Taylor grumbled, which is proof that he’s not the one who normally cleans out the drain. He resentfully moved the cover back into place, then glared up at me. “She wouldn’t go down?”

I shook my head. “She’s a Rali girl.” 

[Note: “Rali” is our latest nickname for Australis. It works well, because her life motto often seems to be “nurse and rally”. I guess both my kids have FOMO.]

I watched Taylor do a final rinse of Mache. She looked utterly despondent, and I had a sudden thought. 

“You know, she’s miserable getting cleaned, even though she should be grateful, just like we’re miserable having our hearts cleaned by God, even though we should be grateful, too.”

Taylor: <grunts in grudging agreement> 

In the subsequent quiescence, I regretted our snippiness with each other, although it seems to be an unavoidable side effect of 4am endeavors. (Come to think of it, I’m not sure I ever apologized for snapping at Taylor. I guess he’ll find out I was sorry when he proofreads this blog post.)

After another minute or so, Taylor turned off the water and stepped out of the shower so that Mache could shake off. She did — with vigor. Once again, I attempted to shelter Australis from the spray, and as I did, I noticed that her eyes had finally slid shut. 

“Ok, for reals this time,” I said. I left Taylor to dry off Mache with a towel that once belonged to a Mines student. 

Australis, thankfully, nursed down within a few minutes, after which I was able to transfer her back into the playard. Mache was dashing madly about our house in her post-bath frenzy, and I could hear Taylor taking a shower of his own. I prepped a wash with his undies and the towels, then walked around the house with a room spray that boasted it would freshen the air for “at least 7 hours”. (Another find from the Mines dumpsters.) 

As I paced my skunky house, I thought about another night, almost six years ago. It was less than a week after Taylor and I had met — before we had confessed our feelings for one another, and before Taylor had even broken up with his old girlfriend. In fact, that summer, said girlfriend was actually staying with him in the room where my son now sleeps. (Yes. It makes me uncomfortable, too. Notably, those were Taylor’s pre-Christian days.) 

Taylor and I met during the training week for a freshman seminar in which we were both “Peer Mentors” (which really overstated our roles in the class). After a campus event ran especially late one night, I offered to drive Taylor home. 

“Oh no,” he demurred. “I’ll just walk. It’s really not far.” 

[Note: No seriously — it’s not. Our house is barely half a mile from Mines.]

Nevertheless, I turned to him and snapped, “How dare you turn down my hospitality. I am reaching out to you in friendship, from a genuine place of caring, and you have the audacity to dismiss my offer? I will not stand for this effrontery. You will let me drive you home.”

“Ok! You can drive me home,” Taylor acquiesced — and so I did. 

Little did I know, but my aggressive “offer” sparked an idea in his heart — the idea that, however prickly my approach, I might be someone who would relentlessly stand by his side. 

After I dropped Taylor off and went home to think about how fun unrequited love is, my soon-to-be-requited love entered his house to discover that the water heater had broken and was gushing water into what is now our basement storage room. Apparently, Taylor’s roommates were either out-of-town or otherwise unavailable, because Taylor’s sole help in cleaning up the mess was his then-girlfriend. 

I wasn’t there, so I only have Taylor’s word to go on when he says that she suggested that they just leave the problem, and that it would work itself out. Thankfully, Taylor didn’t take that advice. While he used the house ShopVac to suck up the water and minimize the damage, his girlfriend slept upstairs.

As he labored into the wee hours of the morning, Taylor thought — and again, I only have his word to go on here — anyway, he thought, I bet Holly would have stayed up with me.

Just between you and me, I think that was the first time he really thought about us, in the future — the possibility of us after Mines. 

The conclusion of Taylor’s shower snapped me out of my reverie. I stowed the air freshener, started the wash, and walked back to the bathroom. Predawn light was beginning to filter into our house, which would have been pretty if I hadn’t been so dead on my feet.

Taylor had already dried off and was smearing on some manly body lotion. (Don’t judge. Colorado is super dry.) 

I silently spread the lotion to the top of Taylor’s back, where he can’t reach. Then, I gave him a tight hug, which squeezed a laugh out of him. 

“What was that for?” he asked. 

I circled around to look into his eyes. I sometimes deride Taylor for having “algae-infested muddy pond water” eyes, but a more accurate description is that he has “kind eyes”. Short lashes frame dark hazel eyes, and soft brows fan out above mild crow’s feet. Those crow’s feet deepened now, as he smiled at me. 

“Do you remember when we first met?” I asked. “And the —”

“And the water heater broke?” Taylor finished. “Yeah, I was thinking about that, too.” He kissed me lightly on the forehead. “Go to bed. I’ll be right in.” 

A few minutes later, Taylor joined me in bed. I snuggled against his back, thankful for the air conditioning unit that keeps our room tolerable  in the summer. 

“You know,” I said sleepily, “there’s no one else I would have rather done this with.”

Taylor: <grunts wearily> “I would have rather just not done it.”