Chili Got Skunked

We were all up at the house for the weekend, and the inevitable finally came to pass.

Ben (brother-in-law) and Chili (goldendoodle) got up early on Saturday and walked the trail around our neighbor’s farm. Chili roused the skunk just as they were getting home, and took a blast right in the face. Murphy and I, characteristically, had the good sense to sleep in, and we missed the whole thing.

Maya and I woke up to Murphy crying at the bedroom door. I stumbled out with him and smelled the skunk as soon as we got downstairs. Murph was on high alert, snuffling furiously at the doorframe. I saw Ben and Chili out in the yard and figured everything was okay, so I opened the back door and Ben shouted “Hey, no, don’t let her in! I sent you a text message!”

“I didn’t get it!” I shouted back, uselessly, half-dressed and wrestling Murph back in.

Leor went for skunk shampoo at the farm supply store, where the clerk said that if we were having a real winter this never would have happened, but when it’s fifty degrees in February all the wildlife goes nuts. This seemed true: everywhere we looked there were families of whitetail deer romping across the fields, and Ben spotted the majestically not-safe-for-work congress of two bald eagles mating in the tree in front of the house.

They scrubbed Chili with the shampoo for what seemed like hours, in the slop sink in the basement. She seemed mildly pissed but otherwise seemed fine.

I told my Dad this story over email and he wrote back about his dog getting skunked in what I guess was the early ‘90s:

“Toby got skunked twice.   

First time was early in the morning on a work day.  We had no idea what to do, but had heard the old wives tale that tomato juice would stop the smell.  We didn’t have tomato juice, but did have Bloody Mary mix.   Pam gave it her best shot, but it didn’t work.   He was a mess, and smelled like skunk and Bloody Mary mix.

Next time, we made up a mix that included hydrogen peroxide that worked a lot better.”

I guess that’s how problems got solved before the Internet, when you had to rely on rumors and your wits, and hopefully a reasonably well-stocked bar. The really amazing thing is that they got a picture without any phones around.

In Other News

The rest of the weekend was uneventful. Maya made chicken wings and we watched the Superbowl: more depressing evidence that Denver has zero path to post-season relevance for at least another decade, between the damnable brilliance of Patrick Mahomes and the strategic mastery that Condoleezza Rice brought to Bush-era foreign policy. The wings were good though.

We also finally finished the Yayoi Kusama jigsaw puzzle that we gave up on over the summer, only to re-assemble it for another go in December. It seems like everyone we know put a least a piece into this damn thing.

I also went out to the fire pit and finally burned all the driftwood and flotsam that the river coughed up during the mild flooding we had last month. Have you ever made a fire, all by yourself, on an unseasonably warm February afternoon? I was zoning out as I fed fistfuls of reeds and dry grass into the blaze, and I had this sudden thought:

It’s not fair to get mad at yourself. Of all the people you know, you have the most dirt on yourself. You’ve been there to witness every unkind thought, every unvarnished moment of embarrassment, awkwardness, regret, whatever. With everyone else you know, no matter how well you know them, you still don’t have access to all of their inner private gnarliness. So you can’t really compare yourself to anyone else, and you should take it easy on yourself, if you can.

I’m working on turning this fire-thought into a Facebook meme with a lot of mixed up fonts, then maybe a series of self-help videos.

Everything is Terrible Right Now Except Music

This new Sleater Kinney song is the best Sleater Kinney song since the best Sleater Kinney song.

There is a brand-new sparkling and gorgeous Helado Negro record.

There is a new Future Islands, which sounds like all of the other ones, but there are a few really tight singles.

Shannon and the Clams have a new single out. The album drops in May, and they will be at Warsaw on May 30th.

There is a new Ty Segall, but of course there is, there always is, why would there not be.

Also, there is a new The Smile. The first one didn’t do much for me, but this one is a whole new animal. It sounds like prog rock, I guess, but imagine if there were a prog rock that one could actually listen to and enjoy in one’s home. Everyone is saying this song is the best thing they’ve done in forever, and everyone is right:

Also, have you heard both versions of this? I cannot get this out of my head:

And Finally, a Restaurant

This is the bathroom at Rana Fifteen, a Turkish restaurant on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. We recommend ordering Rana’s Table.