Mabel and Eunice and the Freakin Frickin Skunk
By Victor Epp
You might think that from what you know about these two that nothing would really buffalo them. Well, that may be the truth of it in pretty well most cases. The appetite they have for devouring the business of just plain living, not much would have the gumption to stand in their way. Well, what would be the point? Whatever it was would just get mowed down anyway; might as well save them the trouble.
Makes sense too, come to think of it. I mean you just have to look at each of their backgrounds to see that you'd have every right to think that way. I mean, Mabel was one of those people when she was younger who would do something just because you said she couldn't. She spent two years in the army when she was a teenager just because somebody said she'd never be able to hack it. Man, there were some miserable times during that period, but she freakin showed somebody. Must not have harmed her any either because she can still shine her shoes better'n anybody I've ever seen.
And Eunice - well Eunice tomcatted around in the country all her life and there wasn't much of anything she wouldn't try to fix if it was broke. It wasn't anything special to see her feet sticking out from underneath that big tub of a station wagon of hers, or her and Howard, that's one of Mabel's brats, chasing down some unsuspecting heron in somebody's stubble field just to get a close up look at the critter.
Well, given all that, it's really no wonder you'd come to that conclusion. But I'm here to tell you that some things are bigger than the both of them put together. There's that thing called extenuating circumstances. When you throw that into the mix there's no telling what might come out the other end. In this case it was Mud.
Now that don't sound right either, but it’s a fact. See Mud isn't just mud. Mud, short for Muddy, is a dog - a big excitable critter that's named for what she gets into more than anything. To look at her you'd think she's just an ordinary cross between lab and shepherd and maybe a couple of other things thrown in. But her brain, such as it is reminds me of something between my curious one year old great grandson and one of them screaming teenagers you see at rock concerts. She gets excited at just about anything, barking so hard that her feet actually leave the ground. About the only way you can calm her down I is wrap a hockey stick around her empty skull a few times.
You'd think I was talking about some ferocious man eating creature the way I say it, but actually the reverse is true. The first clap of thunder that goofy mutt hears and she's trying to get her big bony body under the bed. It's the same thing when some stranger pulls into the driveway. She'll bark and jump as though she'll eat whoever it is and then when they get out of the car, run and hide in the garage. Somehow Mud kind of fits into that household.
Extenuating circumstances is what I said. Wellsir, you take a house in the country, hot, dry weather, one of them concrete front steps attached to the foundation with shrinking soil under it and you've got your extenuating circumstances. I'm describing the exact situation at Mabel and Eunice's place a few summers ago, especially the shrinking soil under the front step. See that's just the sort of thing that makes a right fine cooling off place for some of nature's creatures. You can just crawl in there out of the sun and take yourself a good snooze without anyone ever knowing you're there, unless you happen to be a skunk.
"Holy bleep!" says Mabel, who happens to be sitting in the living room right beside the open front door. "There's a freakin' skunk in the yard!"
First thing Eunice does is check on where Mud is. She's been known to get skunked once or twice without ever learning a lesson. Nope, Mud's in the dog run. Can't be her. She scans the back yard to see if the critter is around somewhere, just passing through. No skunk is to be seen anywhere - front or back. Mabel would have slammed the door shut except it's too hot in the house as it is. Up until now the breeze had provided a bit of relief from the heat. Now it was providing enough skunk aromas to make you think the critter was right there in the house.
Wellsir, it got to be a little too much in a heck of a hurry. Howard and Mavis, the two youngest brats figured they'd go out and find the thing. It didn't take the two of them long to figure out exactly where it was either. Yeah, you guessed it. It was sleeping under the front step. Well, that was a fine freakin' how do you do according to Mabel. Eunice didn't help matters any when she announced that it was probably a female going to have her babies under there and we might as well get used to it unless somebody knew how to get it out of there. For once, Mabel doesn't even challenge Eunice's opinion. She just tells her to shut up and don't say things nobody wants to know about. As I said before, those two have a way with words.
Well, I'm no expert on skunks but as kids we'd flushed enough gophers out of their holes to know that water and burrowing animals don't mix too well. It was worth a shot. I tell Mabel to get the twenty-two while I get the hose to flush the sucker out. Well, it's standard procedure. You drown the critter out of it's burrow and when it emerges you brain it with a board or sling shot or a pellet gun or whatever you have handy. A skunk's skull is thick enough though, that you need a twenty-two as a minimum.
As soon as I start unreeling the hose Mud sees me and knows there's going to be water around. She tries jumping over the top of the run. I pay no attention. My mind is on how fast I can run once the skunk shows its ugly face from under the step. Being skunked is not a whole lot of fun for humans so I'm calculating which way the animal is likely to run and what my escape routes ought to be. Maude, that's Eunice's middle brat, is wandering around wringing her hands and whimpering. She's one of those earth people who wince whenever she has to swat a mosquito. She doesn't want the skunk to be hurt.
We're not sure whether Eunice is trying to comfort Maude or being sarcastic. "We're not going to hurt it dear," she says sweetly. We're going to blow its bleepin brains out. It won't feel a thing."
Then she adds, "Sort of like premeditated murder." Yep, she's being sarcastic all right. Maude starts to out and out bawl and that gets Mud even more excited. Holy bleep! Does everything have to be a three-ring circus around here?
On a more conciliatory note Eunice adds, "Aw, quit your blubberin Maude. If you stunk that bad you'd want to be put out of your misery too, just so you didn't have to smell yourself."
Maude is not consoled.
By now I've got the hose hauled out to the front of the house and over the stair so that the skunk won't trip over it. Alice and Mavis and Howard are hanging around waiting for the action. Maude is pacing up and down the yard blubbering. Lilly is lying on the couch disdainfully. The whole thing is disgusting as far as she's concerned. Mabel is wandering from closet to closet trying to remember where she'd left the twenty-two while Eunice is looking for the shells.
Wellsir once I get into position I take a sprinter's starting stance and turn on the water. It keeps on coming and coming and still no skunk. I have to figure out a different way to stand so as not to collapse when it finally comes out. Another ten minutes or so of hosing and I see a little black snout poking out from under the step. If any more of the critter shows up, I'm ready to clear out, but no, the snout disappears again the way it came. I yell at Mabel to get out here before the thing gets away.
Finally the snout reappears, pauses for a second and is followed by the rest of the body, which is surprisingly big. I had it figured right, She's headed north down the driveway. Perfect!
"Shoot the sucker!" somebody hollers.
"I've got to sight the gun in first," says Mabel excitedly. She's fumbling in her pocket for the shells.
"What?" Here's a woman could hold her own with Annie Oakley any day of the week and she's got to sight her gun in - her own gun at that? She's just making that up, I think.
Just as the skunk sets its course for the driveway, who shows up around the corner of the house but Mud? She's managed to clear the dog run fence and needs to check out all this commotion. When Mud sees the skunk she starts yappin and yippin and hoppin up and down like she's on a pogo stick. She scared the pants off just about everyone including herself.
"For bleep sake Mabel, shoot the freakin' thing!" yells Eunice, exasperated.
Mabel fires a round into the middle of a fence post about a hundred paces away. "Yep, it shoots true," she announces. There's this funny look on her face.
"Mom, Mom! It's getting away!" Howard keeps yelling, waving his arms frantically.
Mud, who's peed all over the lawn and herself in the excitement makes a lunge for the skunk and gets a snoot full. The skunk sees that things are not going too well and changes its mind about the driveway. It wheels right and heads straight toward Mabel's car that she left in front of the open garage door. Naturally, the windows are all down in this heat.
It's all Eunice can do to keep from ripping the twenty-two out of Mabel's hands. "For bleep sake woman," she screams at the top of her lungs, "pull the frickin trigger!"
"I can't!" Mabel screams back just as loud. "I'll hit the freakin car!"
The skunk vanishes.
"Idiot!" mutters Eunice under her breath. Out loud she wonders where the thing went.
"It's in the car and I hope it sprays on every bleepin thing in it!" Maude pipes up defiantly. 'Sprays' isn't exactly the word she used but we'll let it go at that. Good Lord, if she isn't sounding more and more like her mother.
"Alice, you go look," says Mabel.
Normally Alice would happily comply, but not this time. In fact nobody is particularly enthusiastic about the idea. Maybe it doesn't occur to Mabel that she's got two legs too, but she doesn't offer either. It finally gets the best of Howard and Mavis. They're at an age when the chance of an adventure is more important than the consequence.
"Nope," they sing in unison, "not in there."
Maude seems disappointed and I get a sudden hankerin to go look in the garage. See, my car is in the other bay and I don't know if my windows are closed. Thankfully they are but the smell is sure strong in there. Well, it's a big garage but its wide open to see what's what and there's no skunk in there that I can see. Mind, there's the workbench across the back with several shelves under it but still I see nothing. The smell down towards the other end though leaves no doubt about the skunk's whereabouts.
Howard is lying on his belly on the floor with a flashlight shining under the bottom shelf. "I see it!" he announces triumphantly. "I see its beady eyes under the shelf."
It's impossible for a critter that size to get under that shelf through a missing piece of kick plate, but somehow it did.
It seems the adventure isn't over yet. Now we've got to get it out of there somehow. That's going to be even more interesting since the hose won't reach that far. Banging on the shelf with the hammer doesn't do anything either. That skunk is staying put.
First I back my car out and park it down the driveway with the windows shut. The idea is to make as much running room as possible if I flush the thing out. Then I get a couple of the longest sticks I can find and tie them together and start prodding. Mabel and Eunice are standing behind Mabel's car complaining about how everything happens to them.
"Here it comes!" yells Howard at his mom and jumps up out of the way.
"Oh bleep!" says a flustered Mabel. She fumbles with the shells in her pocket, loads the gun and takes another shot at the fence post.
The skunk in the meantime is headed right for her car. At the sound of the shot it takes another turn, fires off a big burst of spray and heads off in the deep grass. Maude is trying to stifle a diabolical snicker. I guess she's figured out that Mabel doesn't really want to hurt the skunk either, but that's not for me to announce to the world.
With sad resignation Eunice breaks out the tomato juice, paper towels and all the paraphernalia the goes with removing skunk odor from cars and dogs. They're smart enough to know better than to bark at each other over this bungled manhunt, so they demurely focus on polishing the car, keeping the conversation to comments on how nice it looks.
There's a footnote to this story that bears mentioning. As you've already seen I always try to be helpful and this time was no different than others. It's just my nature. When the supply of tomato juice was about exhausted, I gave the girls one of them pine tree car deodorizers that I had to spare. It would have to do and maybe it just would.
Extenuating circumstances again intervened. Driving to work in the wee hours of the morning was bearable enough, what with the cool air blowing in the car windows. At that time of day the girls never thought much about closing the windows and locking the car up tight once they got to the parking lot. Well you had to keep everything locked down tight with maybe three or four hundred other cars in the same lot. It was a beautiful clear day, not a breeze in the air. The sun baked everything in site at about ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. That's how the concoction of skunk juice and pine tree deodorized simmered and slow-cooked all day. When Mabel opened the door at quitting time, she could have sworn she saw all the cars around her shuddering.
All I know is at around supper time there was a great cloud of dust on the gravel road by our place and the car was going so fast it had trouble negotiating the turns in the driveway. It had hardly stopped when Eunice and Mabel came flying out like they'd been shot out of a cannon. Eunice headed straight for the shower and Mabel for the pool. For once there was no freakin frickin dialogue. By the time they finally emerged for their supper about two hours later some of the green in their complexion was starting to fade.
The next morning I did notice that they'd taken Eunice's big tub of a station wagon, leaving Mabel's car at home with the windows wide open. There was a small pile of clothes in the burn barrel too. Nobody's ever talked about the affair since, until I brought it up the other day. Now it seems a whole lot more humorous than it was at the time.
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