jakorte's blog

You know that Michigan season between summer and deer season, that ripe 4 week period when you can smell the change in the air? Yup, that’s right. It’s skunk season.

Most mornings our van pool averages between 3 and 5 skunk incidents. They’re always dead, which is a good thing. Still, running over a dead skunk isn’t much fun, especially, if the critter didn’t have time to de-skunk before reaching their demise. That means if you can’t avoid it, you’re gonna squish that scent out all over the undercarriage of your vehicle.

Skunk season means a lot less uninterrupted passenger sleeping, due to having to periodically open all windows. This always makes it worse immediately, but then it eventually gets better; until someone in front of us decides to have their own scent event. I guess I’m lucky I’ve never hit a live skunk with a moving vehicle. I punted-kicked one in college by accident, but that’s another story. Actually, now that I think about it there were two college skunk incidents. The other one was dead soup. That, too, is another story.

Anyway, back to this story: about that evening I officially made the last moving trek into Michigan. On my final trip from Nashville, I crossed over the state line and squished over a real-live dead one. It was past midnight, and to keep myself from getting sleepy, I already had the air vents open and blowing full blast. So we got it in the fullest force possible. My dog gagged and threw up. I gagged and threw up. Through my blurred vision, I managed to make it off the highway into the official Michigan Welcome Center without losing consciousness. I stood outside the car coughing, and gagging and dry heaving, while my three-legged border collie/shepherd mix, Kelsey, looked at me like I was the biggest, meanest moron she’d ever met.

Almost every piece of clothing I owned was crammed into my little Volkswagen Golf, along with a rocking chair. What a way to be welcomed to Michigan. It took a lot of random phone calls to car dealerships, and mildew removers before I was finally referred to a dry cleaner in Lansing that had a huge de-scentifying “shed.� I was able to drop everything off there for a week, including the rocking chair and those upholstered parts of my car that were removable. It worked really well. As did taking Kelsey to the vet, and giving them the job of de-skunking her.

I hope I never have to use the Skunk Deodorizing Recipe that my friend recently gave me. But, just in case, I keep it in a safe and handy place… my recipe box.