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MalodorousMarch 13, 2009 Last night Trav and I set out for a walk. There was some light in the sky but not much; with the time change (way too early!) it was probably closing in on 7:30 p.m. By the time we hit the trail behind the West Tisbury School, it was dark. Trav wasn't wearing his Puplight. I mean, it was dark. Fortunately there's so much sand in the soil around here that you can find your way by starlight, and it helps having a dog with white legs, white face, and lots of white in the underside of his big bushy tail. On we trekked, with Travvy trotting along at the far end of his fully extended Flexi lead. Aside: I finally bought one of these when I saw the large dog size for $28 at Shirley's Hardware -- the horse & dog stores wanted more than $40. I thought I'd like it better than I do. The retractability definitely gives it an edge over the clothesline extension I attached to a six-foot web leash and had to recoil at regular intervals, but the big downside is that I can't just drop it and let Trav trot along beside me trailing his leash, or let it go when he goes into the woods to do his business. Trav also managed to bite most of the way through the web at the snap end. Fortunately I realized this before it broke and reinforced it with a knot through the snap.) Anyway, we were proceeding along our merry way, in the dark, when the pressure on the other end of the line increased and immediately turned into "full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes." I held tight, but since the leash was full out Trav managed to join battle with a dark wriggling shape in the brush at the end of the trail. A cat? A bird? I thought improbably. You're probably way ahead of me here, especially if you live on Martha's Vineyard, whose unofficial mascot mammal has to be the skunk. Dark be damned, you don't need light to recognize a skunk. I'm no fisherman, but I've heard plenty of them talk. Playing Travvy at the end of his leash was as close as I'll get to playing a big fish. If you can imagine a fish howling in frustration because he can't pursue his quarry into the scrubby undergrowth. Needless to say, the fish was paying zero attention to me, but I slowly, slowly, managed to walk backward, shortening the lead and praying hard that the knot at the end would hold (it did) and that Trav wouldn't slip his collar (he didn't, but I just kicked "unslippable harness for high-stress situations" several notches up the high-priority shopping list). Once we'd gotten far enough away that Travvy gave up on the hope of further chase and maybe skunk for supper, I gave him a sniff test. Not too bad: the stink seemed to be confined to his head and neck. He stopped a couple of times to paw at his eyes, so I suspect he got some spray there but not much. Back at the apartment, I thought at first that I could get away without treating the stink. Wrong. I went downstairs to the bathroom, and on the way back up the stairs my nose told me in no uncertain terms that Something Had to Be Done. So I mixed up a half dose of skunk remedy: a pint of hydrogen peroxide 3% solution, an eighth cup of baking soda, and a couple squirts of dish detergent. Amazing stuff. Trav didn't like the rinsing 10 minutes later, but he didn't protest too much. Fortunately it was a few degrees over freezing so I could douse him on the deck without turning him into Malamute Glacé. The stink still lingers in the apartment, however -- too bad the remedy doesn't work as an air freshener. Hmm. Maybe it would work as an air freshener? Remind me to get a spray bottle next time I'm by Shirley's. By this morning's not-so-early light we retraced our steps to inspect the battlefield. Trav made a beeline for it; even my human eye perceived signs of a scuffle in the fallen leaves. No more than that, however: Mr. or Ms. Skunk had made a clean getaway. Even the smell had dissipated. So Trav has survived his first encounter with the island's most distinctive inhabitant. Rhodry's came at a much earlier age, about four months, as I recall. He found a skunk carcass in the woods and rolled in it. By the time I realized what he was doing, he was well and truly skunked. That's when it dawned on me that dogs like to smell like skunks. For weeks after, whenever he got a whiff -- which was often, because we lived near the bend in State Road locally known as Skunk Alley, partly because there's usually a dead skunk somewhere on it and partly because it's near the house of the late Craig Kingsbury, who is widely (and perhaps unfairly) credited with introducing skunks to Martha's Vineyard -- he'd stick his head through the open window and breathe deep. I dubbed him "Looks like a Puppy, Smells like a Skunk." I didn't know about the remedy then. Travvy doesn't look like a puppy any more, and he really doesn't smell bad, but I was singing to him while we walked this morning: "Looks like a puppy, smells like a skunk."
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