By Mary Morony
Who needs an unreliable groundhog or a top hat sporting member of the Ground Hog Club to foretell the coming of an early spring? We most assuredly don’t. As harbingers of spring, groundhogs are woefully inadequate and are weeks late reporting the news. At our house, without the benefit of camera crew or news anchors shoving a microphone up our noses, we know a full two weeks before the guys who don their top hats when spring arrives. No need for us to venture forth in the cold Pennsylvania air to spy on that timid interloper Punxsutawney Phil to see if he scares himself back to ground. It is not even necessary for us to get out of bed. We know all too well before Groundhogs Day if there is going to be an early spring. How, you must be asking yourselves, how could that be?
Our knowledge is brought to us in no uncertain terms by Lottie, our resident aficionado on all things repulsively smelly. She has a particular fondness for the little black and white nocturnal foragers who share our neighboring woods. Despite Lottie’s attempts at keeping their population in check, they thrive in vast numbers around our part of the world.
So much so that she barely has to travel far afield to come upon the big stinkies. It is our luck that a mother skunk gave birth to a litter of babies in December. Old Lots has been picking them off like so many morsels on a passing tray of hors d’oeuvres. The only good part of that is they have yet to come fully into their powerful predator-deterrent as National Geo calls it. But alas, even if that were not the case the impossible-to-get-rid-of foul, oily goo is no deterrent to our darling pound puppy, Lots, who finds the aroma of pew divine.
What we have come to surmise, driven—mind you—by our scentual experience, is that skunks respond to the delicate nuances of the sap rising in the surrounding trees. Their minds immediately focus on one thing and only one thing the siren’s song of love. Abandoning all sense of preservation, not even a parting thought to the young they leave behind; off they go to quell their most primal urges. As Pepé la Pew has said, “Do you know that when you are in love, it is impossible to get insurance?” He and his ilk surge out into the dangers of the wide world beyond their burrows in search of sensuous pleasure. They risk all for a few stolen moments of love armed only with their stink bombs and right into Lottie’s eager maw.
If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourselves. It’s too late this year since today is Groundhogs Day, but keep this in mind for next January. You will start to notice the black and white stinkers on the side of the road all testaments to the impressive draw of the season of love.
Nights in late winter/early spring when Lottie returns home from a busy night of picking off loved-crazed skunks, the garage fills with discontent and her tear-producing odors. Our other two dogs register their outrage in the form of growls, snarls and nocturnal barks as Lottie’s nighttime activities wage an assault on their more delicate sensibilities. Her scent is so pervasive that neither doors nor walls are up to the task of containment. To add a certain je ne sais quoi to her aroma, Lottie buries her prey in a shallow grave and nests upon it like a brooding hen until it arrives at the zenith of repulsive perfection and then she dives into the gooey mass taking what can only be considered a dog’s equivalent of a French bath. This practice renders applying cleaning agents quickly to the afflicted hound, highly recommended for best result – impossible. Hubs and I, this time of year, prowl around the yard, looking for disturbed earth, sniffing like badgers while poking any suspicious mounds with sticks. The discovery of her miasma is mandatory before any measures can be taken to eradicate her odious odor. Unfortunately, she’s wise too and has become more circumspect in her choices of gravesites, which only serves to ingrain her fetor the more.
Experts don’t know why dogs like horrible smells or if they do know, they don’t agree why some dogs have such a strong fondness for the world of rank; perhaps it is a status symbol of sorts like a designer perfume. Clearly it is a preference since our canine buddies have many million more scent receptors than we do and most prefer the three D’s – dead, decaying and disgusting over our three F’s – fresh, floral and fruity.
Early spring at our house looks like a woebegone St Bernard huddled up to the front door reeking of her recent debauchery, quite unable to deduce her love of skunk disqualifies her of entry. Whatever warmth we captured in the garage is lost to the airing required to make habitation possible for our more sensitive canines friends.
Always on the look out for a concoction to alleviate the smell, I scour the Internet checking humane societies’ suggestions. It never ceases to amuse me that humane societies start off cautioning not to let a skunked dog in the house as if you needed the reminder! This year it’s hydrogen peroxide, and a baking soda catsup mask followed by several shampoos. Fingers crossed, I am ever hopeful. Reporting back it seems catsup does little for the smell but has left Lottie a shade of pink in many formally white areas.
What I have discovered while attempting to eradicate the smell of stink – a sort of putrid burnt rubber with overtones of wild onion and a touch of garlic – is that your smell receptors out of necessity fall into the olfactory equivalent of denial. You cease to smell the odor but only for a time. It is the only way I can figure that there are so many posts on Google about how commercial order removing shampoos and a lengthy list of home remedies have rid their errant canines of the foul stench. To date, I have found nothing, but time and airings, has eradicated the vestiges of Pepé la Pew’s ill-fated nights on the town from Lottie’s sumptuously thick winter coat.
One thing we know for sure, spring is on the return. All things being equal I wouldn’t mind getting the news from Phil, albeit late.