The cool thing about living in the country versus the city is that when you smell skunk, it’s actually skunk. Many of the city smells were known to wake me up at three o’clock in the morning when the neighbors started smoking. They smoked the grossest weed! It drove me insane. Rob and I often joked about how much we weren’t going to miss that and how at least when we smelled skunk that it would be what we thought it was.

Generally, I actually like the smell of skunk. It is some weird genetic thing that almost everyone on my dad’s side of the family has. My son has even inherited this trait. But weed is a whole other story. You would think the earthiness of it would be appealing to me, but I absolutely hate it. It’s an immediate headache. When a skunk gets too close, though, I am not fond of it either. It induces an instant headache and usually makes me want some distance.

So, after living in the country for a couple of weeks it was a surprise…or maybe more of a confusion…to wake up to that smell at three o’clock in the morning. I honestly thought that I was back in the apartment for a minute. The dogs gave it away, though. Logan, the border collie, was barking up a storm and running around the house in a frenzy. The first time I just told him to get over it, but the second time he had me up and looking out the windows. Well, straight down to see if I could find something crawling along the side of the house. Ultimately, I never found it – at least by site.

Rob and I had known a few days before that a small creature was roaming the property. I had thought cat, because we had seen eyes in a ditch one day and another day many small prints lined up through the fresh snow. A neighbors cat roaming around trying to get mice was what I had expected. I’d seen a ton of field mice running across the roads out here. The smell that morning gave it away, though. A quick google search showed that skunks and cats can have similar tracks in the snow. And no, Rob didn’t go running out to chase it down and shoot it. First off, he was in Vegas for work. Secondly, we both have an agreement that the skunks are welcome here. Even with dogs, the skunks are actually valuable pest control and I’ve got a mole nest in the back they can have a field day with.

I haven’t seen it back since, so I’m fairly certain it was just passing through. We don’t have enough bushes or brush to house it. Probably a good thing. Aside from worrying about the dogs getting sprayed, I wasn’t looking forward to the idea of having to take a bath in tomatoes because I crossed the wrong side of a skunk.