"Yah," echoed Braedon, "It's cold!"
"Well, water alone wont help," I said, "We'll need to use some tomato juice on her first and I don't know if once is all she'll need."
She didn't. Three sets of tomato wash, ditch water, shampoo, and ditch water, again, were needed. When finished, Sally still had the hint of musk, but not bad, as long as you didn't rub her back or let her lay right next to you. She continued with a hint of musk for almost two months.
The bigger problem was the smell in the house and the skunk in the culvert. Sally was banned from the house for the day. The plastic came off the windows to increase the air flow. Joe threw fresh dirt on the opening of the culvert, burying all but a small six-inch opening. From the local hardware store, he got a box of moth balls. He put these in the vent tunnel inside the house and closed up the house end of the vent with plywood. The intention was to drive the skunk from the tunnel. The naphthalene wafted with the smell of skunk around the edges of the plywood and the tunnel opening, but it was lost in the residual skunk smell in the house generally.
Come evening, we laid a couple of eggs just beyond the culvert opening. And waited. Without window covers, the smell was tolerable. Every couple of hours we snuck out to the culvert with lantern held high to see if paw prints marked the skunk's departure. Perhaps the skunk was waiting for us, just as we were waiting for him/her. In any case, by midnight no signs of the skunk appeared. We finally slept.
In the morning, sure enough, small prints showed at the culvert opening. One set. Leading out and away! We wasted no time. We all helped fill in the entrance, throwing the dirt deep into the tunnel before piling more on the outside.
"What if it just had babies?" asked Jason, "what if it's a mother?"
"God, let's hope not!" Joe and I replied together.
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