Honey, I Skunked the Car

I was driving home last night at about 9:30. It was dark, made moreso by the fact that there are no streetlights here (a fact I really like). There are, however, a lot of animals (I like that too), and when it's dark, they come out. For this reason, I drive home pretty slowly, usually about 30 or 35 mph. This almost always ensures I have someone driving up my rear end the entire way home, since that just seems to be what people do up here (which I still can't understand since the speed limit is all of 40). So, as normal, I was driving home, watching out for whatever my try to run across the road, with someone up my butt.

9 times out of 10, I make it home without seeing any animals. Sometimes I will see a deer or raccoon on the side of the road, thinking about crossing, but usually changing it's mind. Last night, a skunk decided to run across the road, right in front of me.

Now I have someone up my rear end, not close enough that I can't see his/her headlights, but still too close, and I'm going 35. Not enough time to stop. So I try to swerve so that the skunk goes under the car, between the tires. I have no idea if he will do so. I don't even know if that will kill him or not, but I have to try, because I didn't have enough space to brake. So I swerve. And Pepe La Pew goes right between my tires, almost through the center of the car.

I wait for the bump, thinking maybe I didn't aim right. I'm thinking I may have hit him anyway. Maybe he kept running and ran under the tire, despite my best effort.

But no bump. So maybe I didn't hit him.

Holding my breath, I look out the rearview mirror.

Because I had tried to stop so suddenly, the up -my-butt driver has backed off a bit, and in his headlights I see a little white streak running back into the woods, back the way he came.

So little Pepe will live to stink another day.

I feel pretty good about that. Then it occurs to me that he was, after all, a skunk, and what do they do? Spray. Yeah. And I just scared him pretty good, no? Yeah.

30 seconds later, the smell comes. Very subtly, but there.

30 seconds more, and oh boy. The car's been skunked.

By the time I got home a few minutes later, the smell is, well, potent. I pull into the driveway and get out of the car, and well, the smell's a bit more potent out there.

So I go inside and tell my husband as nicely as I can (it's his car, by the way--I may have forgotten to mention that) that the car's been skunked.

Actually, what I say is this:

"Hi honey, I'm home. Wanna hear something funny?"

Luckily my husband has a pretty good sense of humor. He came out to look, or -er- smell, and tells me that not only is the car mean looking (as in dinged up--I didn't do that, by the way, it's just old), it's now mean smelling.

Heh heh heh.

Sorry honey.

So the car's been skunked. Funny thing about it is, that before I got home, there were a bunch of kids playing football in the dark at the next door neighbor's house. After I got home, it seems that the game broke up rather quickly. I wonder if it has anything to do with the car....