I was returning to my office to finish a bit of work last Thursday evening. It was dark and Luna was with me as usual. As we left the parking lot, the dog bolted and disappeared into the darkness. Moments later, the entire neighborhood lit up with the signature odor of a skunk in distress. I quickly called Luna into the building not realizing that she had been hit. We hustled into the office where she commenced to rolling around on the floor and wiping her muzzle on carpets and furniture.
I have an office bathroom so naturally we moved there. I examined the dog, who strangely was not in much distress, but noticed that she did wipe blood off her muzzle on the floor. Apparently, she had made full contact with the critter and likely killed it. What to do. I grabbed a towel, soaked it in the sink and proceeded to wipe her down. Believe it or not, the initial smell wasn’t that bad and I figured she had experienced a near miss, in spite of the evidence of death.
At any rate, she was clean enough for me to finish the half-hour task at hand, after which we went home where I gave her a bath with “Skunk Off.” Unfortunately, I had hung the contaminated towel on the rack in the office bathroom, and neglected to remove it when I left. The gravity of my oversight would not be realized until I (and the entire student body) returned to school the next day.
By the next morning the olfactory situation had moved from mildly concerning to catastrophic. I opened the office wing and was immediately assaulted by what appeared to be military grade tear gas, inducing watery eyes and nearly immediate nausea. All I could think of was that wonderful scene in the movie, Over the Hedge where the Stella the skunk blows the house up with the warning, “Fire in the hole!” I had no idea where or how to begin to mitigate it. Students and faculty members were beginning to arrive, some in remote parts of the building, but none far enough away to escape the nasal assault that Luna had initiated.
The HVAC in the office wing had picked up the oily discharge, sucked it into the system and begun to transfer it to hallways and other rooms. In less than a few hours overnight, each successive air conditioning zone passed the gas to the next, effectively contaminating the whole school building. By morning the situation was worse than the city dump on a July afternoon.
I vainly imagined that popping windows open throughout the school would help, but that was a fool’s errand. There was nothing to do short of calling in the professionals, but I was scheduled to be in Northern Virginia Friday afternoon. Staff would have to handle it. I left the office to go home, change clothes, change cars, and change everything I had touched. The smell was transferring as quickly as ceremonial uncleanness of Old Testament proportions.
I was on the road for an hour and by the time I got to Charlottesville the staff had a quote from a local vendor who promised that this would be “like it never happened.” The sticker price: $9,000! Panicked staff was blowing up my phone as we went back and forth discussing options. Meanwhile, I was running out of gas and stopped near Warrenton at the local Sheetz station to fill up. While the gas was pumping, I went inside to pick up a few items. As I waited at the busy counter, a good ol’ boy – the kind with a baseball cap with a fishhook on the brim, and a cigarette behind his ear – chortled (holding the long vowel), “I smell a pooollle-cat!”
I turned about dejectedly and made my confession before God and the world, “Well, that would be me.” The exchange of stories began with recommendations for tomato juice baths and all the rest. Returning to the car I opened the door and was greeted with another blast of tear gas, unaware of the degree to which I had contaminated the alternate vehicle. As I sat in bewilderment over how to escape the mess I was in, I realized that my leather satchel sitting in the passenger seat was the primary carrier through which skunk transfer was taking place. That bag had also been in the office, and I had left it there overnight rather than packing up my computer. It reeked and had now stuck skunk all over me.
Less than hour later I arrived at the conference center where I was attending meetings. I checked in and the young twenty-something girl at the counter looked at me quizzically, but politely suppressed the urge to ask what surely was in her mind, “Sir, um, why do you stink so badly?” I got to my room and quickly showered, but realized that nothing in my suitcase had been spared. The opening reception was in thirty minutes, and there was nothing to be done. I scrubbed and scrubbed to no avail. I strolled the short distance to the reception through the cool spring air, hoping that it would take the edge off. When I arrived I got a glass of wine like nothing was amiss, and joined my colleagues in the gallery. Some of my best friends were present, and they were brutally honest with me. “Man, you stink.”
By the time the first meeting began it was clear that that the satchel had to be moved outside. I found an exit nearby and set it out. The damage was done and I was destined to endure the cut-away side glances of my colleagues for the duration of the two-day work session. Part of our task was to work on a large common document in Google Docs. I did not know this, but when you access the document, Google assigns an odd random name which appears above your cursor, visible to others who are in the document, things like Anteater or Possum. My random Google-generated name? I am not kidding: Anonymous Skunk. (You can’t make this stuff up).
Meanwhile – thanks be to God – staff had contacted one of our parents, Jackie Gorman, who happens to own a business with the same equipment as those other expensive professionals. She went to work immediately on Friday afternoon, and she and her husband, Ash, personally cleaned my office and the executive potty. God bless them. They’ve gone above and beyond charity.
Monday has come, and we’ve arrived back to school which presents like the smoldering remains of a giant bonfire. Reminders of what happened are still with us, but thanks to the Gormans, the office and our classrooms are habitable. We’ll be replacing ceiling tiles and some carpets, and will wipe down walls for some time to come, but, like the skunk, the worst is behind us.
