Sunday evening turned out to be far more extraordinary than I was planning, or wished it to. And by extraordinary, I don’t mean an excess of ordinary as the word seems to imply, but rather much less ordinary than normal.

My wife was out of town for the weekend in Hawaii with her mother. She was flying back Monday morning. I was looking forward to hitting the sack (that’s a euphemism for counting sheep) and grabbing a solid eight hours of sleep before starting up another work week. 11:30 rolled around and I climbed into my cozy bed and turned on some Saturday Night Live (it was recorded). All of the sudden, Flopsy, our black mutt started barking. This in itself is not extraordinary as the dogs tend to bark at night rather frequently. But she continued for quite a while and as she was I could hear the dogs scuffling about in the backyard.

Out of the blue, I started to detect an odor (read: stench) that reminded me of rotten eggs. Odors such as this at night are not common in our house, especially after I’ve had burritos for lunch, but I knew I wasn’t responsible for the odor (I totally wish I was though, that would have been awesome!). My original thought was there were some kids behind our fence tormenting the dogs. Often the neighborhood youths will use the wash that our house backs up against to smoke doobies. However, I’d never heard of weed that smelled like mule poop. The odor became stronger and stronger to the point that it smelled like our house was lodged inside a giant elephant armpit.

It was at this point I decided to take action. Normally, that action would be to roll over and tell my wife to find out what’s going on while I scouted the perimeter. Of course, by scout the perimeter I mean cower under the covers. As Karina was gone, I had no other choice than to investigate the issue myself. I slowly crept to the side window in an attempt to see if anything was moving on the other side of our fence. To my surprise, the dogs were chasing something small and furry around INSIDE THE YARD!!

All of the sudden, the pieces started to fall into place: horrible stench, small furry entity being chased around the yard. It was clear, somehow a hairy midget who had eaten a burrito for lunch had gotten trapped in our yard. I stepped outside to investigate (using the plastic cover for the dog food as a stench-shield) and when I turned the corner outside my house, I was surprised to see a very frightened skunk! It was frightened because it was cornered by two dogs who smelled like they had been bathing in rotten milk, but only with a more garlic-breathy aroma .

As I wasn’t about to go near the skunk in order to “assist” it out of my yard, I had to segregate my dogs from that side of the yard. If it got in, it would hopefully get out by itself…as long as it’s limbs were still functioning properly (good news for the skunk, the anal secretion glands seemed to have been unaffected by the dog attack). I first tried to put the dogs in our garage for the night. I decided to check on them five minutes later to see how bad the smell was since there was no circulating air. Upon opening the door, I was hit with a wall of stench that seemed to approximate what I would assume a sewage treatment plant fire would smell like, but with undertones of limburger cheese. I didn’t have the heart to leave the dogs there…but they surely weren’t coming inside the house.

Eventually, I decided to bring out their dog crates and have them sleep in the backyard confined. My only fear was the skunk, bent on revenge, would see the dogs defenseless and proceed to douse the dogs in stink-juice. Thankfully, that did not happen and by the time I woke up on Monday morning, the skunk was gone. The odor unfortunately was not. But victories are victories and by the time Karina had gotten home the smell had subsided to the point that our house only smelled like that guy in the mall who didn’t put deodorant on before apparently running a marathon (I’m not sure what is at the mall that is so important a shower/bath is rendered pointless).

Speaking of Karina getting home…she hooked the family up with some sweet souvenirs. I must say, she did a fine job, obviously putting a lot of thought into them. My favorite was the shark tooth necklace she brought home for me. It’s sweet!

I did start to wonder about the point of souvenirs in general however. Frankly, it seems rather odd to bring home items to people at home. It seems like you’re saying “here is a daily reminder of something freaking awesome that you didn’t get to experience.” I know, I know: it’s the thought that counts, right? While on vacation, you were thinking about your friends and family back home enough to bring them back a native treasure. That may be the case occasionally (in Karina’s case it was, her gifts were very thoughtful and appropriate), but speaking as a guy, that thought usually ends up being: “oh crud, I’m at the airport and I didn’t buy any souvenirs…let’s see what’s at the gift shop…this Nevada flask should work for my dad…he doesn’t drink, but it’ll work for coffee, and this ‘what happens in Vegas DAYS in Vegas’ calendar will work for mom…check and check.”

You know, I think I may put together some souveniers from my little skunk excursion. It seems far more appropriate to give gifts that say: “here’s a reminder of something awful you didn’t have to go through.” Now, where would one find bottled skunk anal (or skanal) juice with a clever catch-phrase such as “stinking of you?”