My wife and I were having breakfast one Sunday morning when a ruckus erupted from under the mud room step A hurried investigation ended in the garage with the most God awful stink I had ever experienced. My eyes watered and our noses burned as our ears were treated to a piercing shriek from our daughter's bedroom. She came running into the kitchen, panic in her eyes and a towel over her nose, looking for the cause of her discomfit.

For weeks we had been hearing faint scratchings coming from the mud room, a small room off the kitchen containing a shoe closet, a back door and the door leading to the garage. A pair of skunks decided that the space under our mudroom step contained all the necessary ingredients for a proper skunk home. Featuring easy access to the outside, the winter temperature never went below freezing, the food source (garbage cans) was near by, and the house insulation provided the ideal nesting material. As long as no one disturbed their new tiny additions, no odors of defense issued from their home. Unwilling to disturb whatever was making the scratchy noises, the winter passed uneventfully. Until the smell could not be ignored,

It was the first warm day of Spring when one of the skunk babies got lost on the way back from the food source and wandered into the garage when the door was open. Finding itself locked in, the baby skunk panicked and, sensing my presence with only a lawn mower between itself and the enemy, let loose a small, but potent stream of stink juice. I saw the tail go up an instant before the release and managed to avoid the main stream. Even after three weeks of scrubbing, tomato juice treatments and daily airings, the garage retained it's skunky reminder. I finally enticed the little tike out on the driveway with cat food and proceeded to board up the hole under the house while the family was away. They never returned, probably deciding that this neighborhood stinks.

Retired but not tired.

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