*No Animals Were Hurt In The Creation of This Post

There’s a lyric from a Ludacris song that I can very much appreciate at the moment: “It’s only right that I share my experiences with yall cuz I been places you’d never imagine.” For example, in the direct stream-path of a skunk’s spray.

Yes, after 20 years of living on this farm I’ve finally had the excruciatingly rare and smelly experience of getting hit with a skunk’s shit-storm. Here’s how it went down.

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been having a nightly visit from an egg snatcher. We suspected it was a racoon as that has been our experience with egg snatching. At first it was just eggs disappearing with the signature holes for entrance and exit along the barn yard fence perimeter. For the past couple of mornings, however, dad and I had noticed that some of the hens were missing and all that was left in their coops was an unusual amount of feathers. Deciding enough was enough we set the cage trap last night.

Expecting to see the familiar and some what cute au natural Tammy-Faye Mesner (Faye-Baker if you didn’t know) eyes and medium sized pointed ears, to our surprise inside the trap a black and white critter was feverishly running left to right trying to find a way out.

“Great, now what the fuck do we do?” was the first thing, dad said, translated for your convenience from his native tongue.

I suggested, “Why don’t we poke it until it finishes all its stink.” So we did that, oblivious to the following fact: “Because skunks have only enough scent for 5 or 6 "reloads" —about 1 tablespoon (15 grams)—and take a couple of days to refill their scent glands, they are reluctant to expend their ‘ammunition’.” This fact, by the way, is either completely wrong or this particular skunk was psychic and had saved up 6 days worth of ass-blast; dude had like thirty rounds of ammo. Regardless, after poking it and allowing it to shoot 3 shots I figured it was done.

WRONG.

As soon as homeboy looked like he was out of juice I opened up the front of the cage so dad could nail it with some lead. That’s when I became a casualty of bio-chemical warfare. I got shot, point-blank, in the fucking arm.

I dropped the trap door, on the skunk’s neck, and he fired another round. I saw the liquid arc and head for my face. I shit you not; it was like slow-motion. I went into matrix mode and leaned back worse than when Chris got his shit rocked by Yvette in Fight Night Round 2 at Jess’ cottage [(90% of you don’t know what that means, but lets just say he got like 10 jabs in the back of the head after the KO moment) If you still don’t know, don’t worry, not important] I stepped on the door to hold the greedy critter in place while dad took aim. As I hoped dad wouldn’t inadvertently shoot my nuts off, I just about wiped the green musk that started to burn a bit on my pants.

Why is that always my first reaction to getting stuff on me? As far back as I can remember I can hear my mom saying, “Not on the pants!”

Instead of wiping I stopped and ear-muffed while dad finish off Pepe le Pew. When we were finished, adrenaline expelled, I started to smell it.

I’m sure some of you City Slickers have smelled the aftermath of a skunk spraying. I’m sure that you’ve winched and said, “Ewww! Skunk!” Let me tell you something, that smell that you know is nothing compared to the smell now etched in my grey matter. Imagine if you will the following scenario: a freshly cut onion shoved up one nostril and a tube jammed up the other nostril sucking fumes from a tire fire. If you can imagine that then you’d know exactly how it smelled.

After giving last rights and burying the carcass we went back to the house. As soon as we opened the basement door mom yelled down, “WHAT’S THAT SMELL!” I went up and she said, “take everything off down stairs! Go go!” nose pinched, eyes watering, literally pushing me down the stairs.

Hahaha.. fuck.. Skunks suck. As a final note here are some facts I scrounged up about their spraying mechanism.

The best-known and most distinctive feature of the skunks is the great development of their scent glands, which they can use as a defensive weapon. They have two glands, on either side of the anus, that produce a mixture of (An abundant tasteless odorless multivalent nonmetallic element; best known in yellow crystals; occurs in many sulphide and sulphate minerals and even in native form (especially in volcanic regions)) sulfur-containing chemicals ( (The univalent radical CH3- derived from methane) methyl and (A hydrocarbon radical (C4H9)) butyl (Click link for more info and facts about mercaptan) mercaptans) that has a highly offensive smell. Muscles located next to the scent glands allow them to spray with high accuracy as far as 2 to 3 metres (7 to 10 ft). The smell aside, the spray can cause irritation and even temporary blindness, and is sufficiently powerful to be detected by even an insensitive human nose anywhere up to a mile downwind.

*I lied, we killed the fucker. We were fine with him taking eggs, but taking the hens was not cool.