Close Call

Since I haven’t done much that would interest anyone in the past few days, I will again resort to my dog for a source of entertainment. At the time the following story took place, no one present thought it to be very funny. We had a close call, and had the outcome been different, I might have been ready to turn Squirt over to the pound.
Several years ago we added on to our house. The addition is really like a guest quarters because it is separated from the main house by our garage. Since we raised a large family, we had more than one freezer for many years; and at the time of the addition, we had a chest freezer in a corner of the garage. The workers showed up at the usual early morning time and Squirt was, as always, ready to get out into the midst of all the activity. I kept hearing him bark and saw that he had something cornered behind the freezer, but I figured it was just a frog and never tried to see what it was. As you can see by the photo, he doesn't willingly tolerate even a trespassing grasshopper. You can't see the grasshopper in this photo, but I knew it was hiding in the grass trying to avoid certain death.
MH and I had an early morning appointment in town - an appointment of a serious nature - so we left Squirt outside with instructions to our carpenters to let Squirt inside when he seemed ready for his usual morning nap. We got to the appointment, which happened to be at a Dr’s office, and MH had, quite fortunately, failed to turn off his cell phone. While we were waiting, MH’s cell phone rang. The carpenters were calling to say that Squirt had a skunk cornered behind that freezer. Yep, a skunk! Neither of us believed that this was possible. I told MH that if Squirt had a skunk cornered behind our freezer and had been barking all that time, everyone in the southwest corner of Dyer Co. would surely know about it. I was convinced that what the carpenters were looking at must undoubtedly be a plain old cat. Squirt hates the very sight of a cat. MH didn’t really think a skunk was a serious possibility either, but to be on the safe side he gave his faithful employee, Frank, a call and asked him to come out here and check on things. As you can imagine, when Frank heard what he was being asked to do, he was not at all thrilled. If I remember, Frank’s response was: “Oh, so you want ME to be sprayed by the skunk!”
Well, Frank did reluctantly come and it was definitely a skunk. The poor carpenters had been trying to get Squirt to quit barking and get back inside the house for some time, but Squirt was like a child playing little league baseball in the outfield. He had “called” the skunk, it was his, and nobody was getting near his skunk. Frank reported to us that when either of the 2 carpenters tried to make Squirt go inside, he’d snap at them as they got near. Then they all picked up sticks to try and “poke” Squirt away from the freezer area with the sticks, but he’d snap at first one stick, then the other, before whirling around to resume barking at the skunk. I suppose the skunk had figured out that she was safe, so she wasn’t budging. Squirt finally got so tired he gave up and came in on his own.
Well, there is a gentleman who owns an animal damage control business that is about 1 1/2 hours away from our home. MH and I call him the “Critter Gitter”. At any rate, I called him and he agreed to come but he thought it might be a few hours before he could get here. Mr. Smith finally arrived, captured a full grown female skunk, and hauled it away without the thing ever spraying. Kudos to Mr. Smith. I guess we’d have had to move if the skunk had sprayed in the garage, and I doubt we’d have ever been able to get the carpenters to return. We removed the freezer from our garage and are now careful not to put anything in the garage that an unwanted animal can hide behind. I have found out one thing from this experience. A skunk only releases its awful pungent odor as a last resort, and thank goodness this skunk had not resorted to this line of defense.
Only a few days after this incident, our yard was mowed. The man who mows our yard wears protective ear muffs while working to avoid damage to his hearing. That day he pulled those ear muffs off and hung them over a tree limb in the front yard, forgetting to take them home when he finished at our house. As luck would have it, MH and I didn’t notice those things hanging there that afternoon. We let Squirt out to relieve himself just before bedtime every night and that night he caught sight of those ear muffs and evidently thought he had spotted another intruder on our property. He immediately started barking and jumping like a maniac. MH and I saw the ear muffs and since they were black with just a touch of white on them, we were confident we had been visited by another skunk, although we weren’t willing to get close enough to find out. We were absolutely panicked. MH hollered and threatened Squirt with the fly swatter, finally coercing him to come back inside. We had a big laugh the next morning when we saw that we had been scared to death of being sprayed by a pair of ear muffs!
Never could decide whether to name this photo "Have a Tampa" or "The Flutist". Please vote!