|
Publication Date 4-14-10 I have a diet plan for you. If you want to cut down on how much you eat for breakfast, just have your dog chase a skunk off the front steps at 5:00 a.m. With that smell permeating the air, oatmeal just doesn't taste the same. I ran around the house opening all the windows, hoping to get a little fresh air exchange going. That helped, a little, but since it was 40 degrees outside, the furnace kicked in after a minute and a half. Warm skunk smells even worse than cold skunk, so I ran around the house turning all the thermostats down. Pretty soon we had a cold smelly house, an ashamed dog lurking in one corner of the porch and front steps that were a little less appealing than a toxic waste dump. My understanding is that there are dogs that are capable of learning from experience. I would love to meet one of those dogs. The dog we have? Not so much. This isn't the first skunk encounter for this particular dog. Since she's not much bigger than a skunk, and roughly the same shape and coloration, she probably thinks skunks are visiting cousins with hygiene problems. That fact wouldn't necessarily lead to odor issues, but because the little dog is an aggressive psychopath, she greets these traveling cousins by launching into a full scale attack, with teeth bared and ferocious barking. Skunks don't like that sort of thing. With that kind of attitude, it's not surprising the dog has fairly common run-ins with skunks, but this is the first one that has impacted so directly on my life. If she's a smelly mess, I see it as not my problem. It's a big old world out there, which means there's plenty of space for a dog that smells like skunk to keep its distance from me. But when our front steps are collateral damage, so to speak, I have to get involved. My wife had collected the dog, wearing rubber gloves and a look of grim determination, so I decided to do what I could to reduce the level of smell around the front steps. I dug the pressure washer out of winter storage, filled the gas tank and gave the starter rope a tug. It started on the second pull. I let it run for a few seconds, then shut it off and hooked up all the various hoses. When I turned on the faucet, water sprayed in every direction. I diagnosed a bad hose end. I trudged to my shop, rummaged through my spare parts and found a new one. I knelt on the gravel in the driveway and cut and spliced the repair into place. I could have taken the hose to the shop with me and worked standing up at a comfortable work bench, but for a five minute repair, why bother? I'll tell you why. I have bad knees. Not bad in terms of evil, but bad in terms of if I use them, they hurt. When I know I'm going to be working on my knees, laying tile or the like, I use knee pads and foam rubber and all sort of cushiony type stuff, but I don't typically carry it all with me everywhere I go. I turned on the faucet again and there were no leaks, so I started the pressure washer. The outlet hose sprayed water in way too many directions from way too many places. My investigation found half a dozen leaks. The hose had been coiled up and sometime during the winter, something had cut across the coil, hitting every loop. I don't know for sure how it happened, but I'm going to blame the dog. I went to town and bought a new hose. It cost $38.00 and I then had three hours invested in a ten minute job. I knelt in the gravel to hook it up. I pulled the rope and the engine started immediately. It ran smoothly for ten seconds and stopped. Let's not drag this out. The rest of my day involved a new fuel line, half a can of carburetor cleaner and extensive squinting through my bifocals at engine parts. I never did get the front steps cleaned – it got dark before I got everything running. As the day progressed, I noticed I was having a little more trouble each time I had to stand up to get another wrench, but didn't give it much thought. The next morning I couldn't get out of bed. When I finally managed to fling my legs over the edge and sit up, the first thing I saw was that I'd sprouted an auxiliary kneecap a couple of inches below the original. The swelling went down after about four days and in less than a week I could walk more or less normally. At any point during that week I would have gladly kicked the little dog, but, you know, I couldn't. Copyright 2010 Brent Olson Brent Olson |
