firefighterjake said:
I never thought the skunk smell was particularly bad . . . until a skunk wandered into our basement garage one summer and sprayed inside . . . I remember waking up out of a sound sleep gagging . . . felt like we had been gassed with some toxic nerve gas or something (at least I would imagine that's how it would feel like) . . . the next week or two were terrible . . . nothing worse than having to go to school smelling like a skunk for two weeks.
Sounds like my skunk story, but mine has some pretty humorous (now anyway) twists.
Woke up the same way, thought we'd had a terrorist chemical attack. When it's that strong, it doesn't smell like skunk at all, just toxic gas. We were both in college at the time, rushing around, getting the kids ready. Finally when we were leaving, I saw what was going on. There was a dead skunk right in the middle of the lawn. Oh, well... it'll have to wait until we get home.
Walked into the O chem lecture hall and sat down. Young kids start looking around and sniffing the air. Finally, some young dude says, "Alright... who's got the skunk weed?" Yep, it was my backpack full of books that had been sitting in the hallway by the front door. Everybody had a good laugh, even the prof. Then we got into a short discussion about thiols and how I might use organic chemistry to neutralized the odor. "You might check in with Dr. S, his work centers around sulphur compounds." So after class I head to talk to Dr. S, who gives me about 16 different things that might work... if only I had those chemicals at home. So I get home and call my good buddy Ray, who just happens to be an organic chem prof at Skidmore College. He says, you know, you should talk to Dr. S at SUNY Albany (same Dr. S I spoke to hours before), he's a sulphur chemist." Yeah, yeah...
Finally, I decide to try to figure out what three organic chemistry profs can't figure out for sure. I decide to try a solution of household lye (who knows why at this point in time, O chem has now all but left me, maybe Adios can tell us). I mix the lye up in a plastic pail full of water and head out to remove the skunk. I grab a silage fork, slip it under the carcass (a great cat scraper-upper BTW), and run off into the direction the wind is blowing until I hit woods and fling it as far as I can. Back at the house, I realize that in my haste I forgot to mark the location where the skunk was lying. We started sniffing around the area, but our noses were so overtaxed with skunk smell by then we couldn't smell it at all. I had to dump that bucket of lye someplace, so I poured it in an area about 5' around where I thought he was and hoped for the best.
No luck. The smell persisted through several rainstorms, sunny days, lawn mowing. It seemed to be much worse right in the house instead of outside, actually was mostly in the basement at that point. Weird.
Then about a month or so later I figured it out. Before the little stinker died (from what, we'll never know) he sprayed the house right next to the front door. That's why the smell was so overwhelming in our bedroom. That door is right at the bottom of the stair to our room. I discovered the skunk juice as a big yellow-brown streak that ran down the vinyl siding and then down the foundation wall. It was in the block itself now. Nothing to do but wait it out. Six months later, I could still smell it every time I went down to fill the stove.
So, BB... about that measly amount of skunk juice. I ain't buying it. Maybe southern skunks, but ours are real pissers.
Now... if someone can tell me how to get the smell of cat piss out of a Camry wagon that I accidentally locked my cat in for three days. :roll:
