Down Under

When I was 12 years old, Madge took me on my first airplane trip to Alton, Illinois, to visit my cousins. Their house was the first house I had ever seen with a basement. There was a full-size door under the stairs that led to the second story, and when you opened it, cheery, carpeted stairs greeted you to take you to the basement.

This basement was carpeted, had small windows to the yard, and had 2 nice big bedrooms. There was a pool table in the middle room with lots of games spilling out of a game cabinet. It was a nice basement. It was what I thought basements were supposed to be.

Basements here in Colorado, and more specifically, the historic district of Old Colorado City, are vastly different than the basement I enjoyed in Illinois. I went house hunting again today, once again in Old Colorado City, and one again in a house built in 1904. Now, the main floor was admittedly quite nice (nice paint and white crown moulding) with the exception of an unfortunately placed main bathroom off the kitchen. However, the basement once again was reminiscent of a serial killer's basement. Think: Buffalo Bill's basement in "Silence of the Lambs."

Apparently, there were a few architectural trends in 1904: Dining rooms and living rooms separated by half walls with built-in book cases (cool), big front porches with wide rails (cool), and inky black tiny basement rooms made of concrete and crumbling bricks and boulders (not cool).

Perhaps I am being over picky. But I indeed cannot see myself playing foosball or having a game cabinet in Buffalo Bill's basement. Total deal breaker.

The hunt continues.

What's that god-awful smell? Oh, it's me.

Last night, at midnight, after taking a nice bubble bath and getting into my jammies, I let Scooter out the back door to do his business before we went to bed. Within minutes I heard him growling and snarling and I jumped outside, which activated my motion light. It revealed Scooter in the yard...with a skunk. The skunk ambled calmly over to the shed and crawled underneath and Scooter, dazed and confused, walked around the yard coughing and wheezing.

Damn. It was going to be a long night.

I called to him and clapped my hands, trying to get him back on the porch, but he kept walking around the yard. Finally I got him inside. Big mistake, but what was I to do when the skunk was right outside the back door? His eyes are blood red, he's slobbering and foaming at the mouth, and wheezing. I hauled him to the bathroom, shut the door and looked for tomato sauce. All I had was pizza sauce and a small bottle of apple cider vinegar. It would have to do. I go back in the bathroom, start washing him down and I dump the pizza sauce over his head. Imagine, if you will, an Australian Shepherd standing in a tub with chunks of tomatoes and mushrooms on his head. It was pathetic and hilarious.

I wash him with the sauce, the vinegar and then with people shampoo, because of all the times to be out of dog shampoo, last night was not a good time. When I let him out he rushed into the living room and rubbed himself all over the carpet. Hmmm. That couldn't be good either.

I see his nose is bleeding and his eyes are still bloodshot so I called the Emergency Vet Clinic to make sure that as long as he's up on all his shots, he should be fine. They reassured me that this was indeed the case.

So, I lit some candles, closed off the bedroom and office doors and slept on the couch. Scooter would shift in the night and lay on the floor at my head and I would flip myself on the couch to try to move as far away from him as possible. The smell was horrible. I truly know the meaning of the word REEK now. It was nothing like the odor you run across in the road at night. Much worse. It was a combination of burned rubber, chemicals and rotten potatoes.

I finally went to sleep at 3 a.m. and woke up at 7 a.m. to go to the store to purchase hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and more vinegar. According to the message boards, this would do the trick. They were wrong. I lit candles, put down tropical smelling Carpet Fresh, put out bowls of Vinegar, Moth Crystals and baking soda in every room and threw Scooter back in the bath tub for his second bath. A combo of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and Dawn dishwashing detergent still didn't work.

So, I'm outside on my deck this afternoon, because I couldn't stand to be in the house, and my neighbor Clint walks over. He had heard the commotion last night and smelled the skunk, so he knew. He encouraged me to go to the feed store up the hill to get something they had that was supposed to do the trick. So off I went. I walk into this small feed store and the woman working there walks up to greet me. "Hi," I said. "I'm looking for...." And before I could finish my sentence she reached across me to a shelf and brought out a huge bottle with the words "Skunk Odor Eliminator" across it. She held it out to me and said, "Honey, your pet ain't the only one you might wanna use this on." As that sentence began to sink in, another woman appeared out of a back room with her face scrunched up. "Good lord, what happened in here?" she asked. "Who brought a skunk in?" Again, I let that sink in a moment and the guy at the counter turned around and was laughing. Then I realized it was me they were smelling. It was pretty funny. And I had just spent an hour at the grocery store buying home remedies. No telling how many people I offended there.

So I get back home and the smell was literally emanating from the house as I drove up. I went in, and gave Scooter his third bath with this Skunk Odor Eliminator. While he was busy drying himself on the living room carpet and getting Hawiian Tropic Carpet Fresh all over himself, I got Pine Sol and bathed my arms and hands in it. Then I attacked myself with Lava soap. Then started cleaning the bathroom. It was in the towels, it was in the shower curtain, the shower curtain liner and the actual shower curtain hangers themselves. I threw the liner away, washed the rest, soaked the hangers in Lysol and scrubbed down the entire bath and tile area with 409 and then again with Pine Sol.

After a while I realized it wasn't me stinking, it was my rubber wrist bracelet. It is also now soaking in Lysol. I rolled about 400 moth balls under the shed and blocked his ingress into the yard from under the shed with concrete blocks and rocks. Critters Response wants $129 to set up a trap and then it's "$69 per skunk," which for some odd reason, I found hilarious. They price "per skunk." I mean, come on. That's funny.

So, now I get ready for bed again. I have Vix Vapor Rub under my nose and I've gargled several times, as the smell is making the back of my throat hurt. I have windows open and fans on. All plastic and rubber items are soaking. All areas have been wiped down. All offending clothes that came in contact with dog and/or smell are in washing machine.

It's been a long day. I'm going to bed.