Hey, gang.
In the words of the late, great Freddy “Rerun” Stubbs, “What’s happening?!”
I suspect that reference may predate some of you, but let’s get our ol’ school TV references in while we still can!
So, here we are, all you hopeful daylight seekers. Yes, the rotating orb we’re all spinning on is about to pull a Donald O’Connor. (Yeah, that guy who could walk up a wall onto the ceiling and then flip back in the opposite direction. Just try thinking of Gene Kelly, only lose the umbrella and maybe give him a a pair of moon boots!)
Anyway, as we can finally start to monitor our impending joy in terms of hours vs. days, let’s spend our penultimate countdown day with two flummoxed brothers, two desperate dudes with a real stinker of a problem.
So, I know we’ve talked about her in the past, the odd misfortune she was able to manage and stick around for more than a decade and a half. But beyond somehow surviving ordeals like being hit by a milk truck and nearly choking to death on the stinging hairs of nettles, my resilient Wheaton Terrier Kaylee M. Fischer had other challenges.
This was one of them.
Back in the early 1980s, my younger brother, Chris, and I were just hanging out at home one night. Our sister, Kerry, was out with some friends and our parents were out to dinner.
It was one of those oddly warm October nights when you feel like you might actually get another taste of summer. (Those who know me personally will tell you that I can’t stand the cold, so a warm spike of any kind – especially one in the middle of October – is always a gift.)
Funny thing, though, this warm-weather spike was, dare I say, almost too warm. To give you an idea, Chris, tired of pouring off sweat, I guess, had gone up to the attic to rummage around for an old box fan.
As above, I’m always one to prefer hot vs. cool, but before too long, we were running the fan in the kitchen, watching college football on my Mom’s mini TV.
At one point, Kaylee started wimpering a little, her usual m.o. when she needed to go outside to do her thing.
We obliged her, of course, letting her run out the door and onto the front lawn.
She wasn’t out there long, though.
And let’s just say what we heard didn’t sound like the typical yelp – not typical for Kaylee anyway. Yeah, this was more like a shriek.
I quickly ran outside and watched not one, but two, skunks waddle away from one of our front hedges, with poor little Kaylee, her eyes no doubt burning, flying back through the front door before I had time to close it.
She tore into the house and ran directly into my sister’s room, right underneath her bed.
The awful smell was so immediate, I nearly puked right there in the foyer. Chris, for his part, came running out of the kitchen, first knocking over the box fan and then yelling out a few deleted expletives, not quite beliveing what was happening.
And when it became clear that it was going to be no easy task to get Kaylee out from underneath Kerry’s bed, I suddenly remembered something.
My dad worked as a sales manager for a large can company back in the day, and sometimes he’d have sample products lying around in the basement.
I can’t remember when I first heard it, not knowing if it were a wives tale or not, but the notion that tomato juice could neutralize the godawful smell of skunk secretion quickly seemed like a pretty damn good idea. But first, how to get poor half-blind Kaylee the wonder Wheaton out of my sister’s room?
For the record, Chris gets all the credit for that. Braving the smell, he got underneath the bed and somehow dragged her out of there. She was always a very gentle dog, but at one point, she sort of curled her lip. Not good.
Together, we managed to subdue her and then made our way downstairs. The smell just kept getting more rank, and the freakish heat just made it worse.
Our house had a large basement that was essentially cut in half; there was a finished side and an unfinished side. The latter was the place that my dad usually kept those work samples I mentioned earlier.
I quickly told Chris the plan, and we started turning everything upside down, looking for that supposed antidote. And all the while, poor Kaylee continued to whimper and suffer.
And then…
There it was.
It wasn’t just what the doctor ordered, but it was certainly the next best thing.
In a remote corner of the unfinished side of the basement was a 12 pack of vegetable juice cocktail. Both Chris and I thought about celebrating, but there was definitely some doubt. After all, there was something like tomato juice in those bottled concoctions my Dad – thank God – had lying around, but was it the same thing? Would it do the job?
We were about to find out.
Now Kaylee, who was probably suffering through one of the worst days of her life, had no intention of making this easy. (Oh, and by the way the smell just continued to worsen.)
We’d been able to like the door behind us, so she couldn’t get back into the house, but we hadn’t yet figured out how we were going to, you know, get the magic liquid on her. Chris tried gently pouring one of the bottles on her back, but she yelped and ran towards the far side of the basement. Poor thing was definitely pretty well shook up. And there was no way she was going to let us do what we needed to do without a fight.
And then I think I got my best idea of the night.
I ran upstairs, now sweating my ass off from the extreme heat and with drenched inflamed eyes, like I’d just watched Old Yeller for the umpteenth time. I grabbed Kaylee’s leash and then, believe it or not, I ran up to my room and grabbed two pairs of socks. One for me and one for Chris.
I headed back downstairs and explained to Chris what I thought we might be able to do. The smell was so awful at this point, I think he would have been up for anything even resembling a plan.
We started.
At that point, my eyes were tearing so badly, I could barely see. That’s when I explained to Chris what the socks were for. Yep, we tied them around our faces like we were going to rob a bank.
It seems cruel in retrospect, but there was only one way to carry out the plan. We managed to get Kaylee’s leash hooked to her collar, and we pulled her towards one of the support beams in the basement. (It was actually a lot more like a support pole, and that’s what we tied Kaylee to so she couldn’t run away again.)
With Chris all but choking her, as he tried to keep her still, I proceeded to pour a dozen cans of vegetable juice cocktail directly on top of my beloved dog’s head, my makeshift kerchief consisting of two white tube socks tied tightly around my nose.
A few hours later, Kaylee actually fell asleep, no doubt exhausted from the ordeal. And incredibly, although it would take several days for the house to smell anywhere close to normal, there was no denying that the Fischer brother’s desperate plan actually had merit.
Some years later, when I was in college, my mom told me that Kaylee had gotten zapped again by another skunk. She had taken her to a groomer that specialized in ‘deskunking dogs, but she said it didn’t really work very well.
Who would have thought, huh?
You guys have a great night.
JFish
@Copyright 2025 by John L. Fischer