Last night I got home a little late and in turn got to bed kind of late. Around 4 in the morning, after only a couple of hours of sleep, I heard a really strange sound coming from outside. My bedroom faces the front of the house so I looked out the window and didn’t see anything. The sound, which was a little like when you pop the bubbles that come in packing wrap, you know the kind that you put on stuff when you mail it, was pretty loud and definitely annoying.
Strange, I thought to myself, wonder what that is. I kept looking but didn’t see anything.
I tried to go back to bed but it continued and since it was loud, it was bugging me.
I went downstairs and opened up the front door. Still nothing.
I decided to take the next step, and walk outside. I went to the side door which leads to the top of the driveway, near the garage. I walked past the first car, then past my truck, and got to the end of the driveway.
I looked around the back of my truck and right there – it was garbage night so I had a black construction bag with garbage near the street – was a skunk ripping apart the bag.
Uh – oh. I was about 5 feet away from a skunk. When you buy your kids a stuffed animal that looks like a skunk, it’s cute. When you are feet away from one, they are evil looking and smell terrible. And since our old dog got sprayed twice when we were in Somerville, I knew how bad it would be.
So I did what any self respecting adult male in fairly good shape would do…I ran back into the house. Quickly. Quietly screaming “don’t spray me, don’t spray me, don’t spray me.” And since I had no shoes on I ran like a 3 year old girl, tip toeing up the driveway.
At that moment, it wasn’t a skunk, it was a chupacobra. I closed the door and hid from view of the street, like there was a zombie or something out there. I pulled myself together and went to the window, crouching down in case the skunk fired his stink at me, I could duck.
The issue was what to do now. I decided to try a passive approach to getting rid of him, the always reliable “psssttttt” sound. So I stood at the window on the first floor, at 4 in the morning, making a loud pssstt sound to scare away a skunk making a mess in front of my house.
Didn’t work. He didn’t even look up.
I didn’t want to clean up all that crap when he was done, so I thought to myself ‘what would Chuck Norris do?”. You know what he would do?? He would act like a man and take care of that (expletive deleted) skunk.
I transformed into Chuck.
I slowly crept out the side door again activating the motion light. I grabbed some pea-sized pebbles from the driveway, and decided to throw them at the skunk.
I peaked around the front of the car near the garage, stepped out, and threw a stone. It hit the garbage bag. The skunk didn’t flinch. I threw another one and it skipped past the skunk. He kept on eating. The third one hit the mark, but the skunk only stopped for a second and kept on going. I’m not freakin joking. It was like the wind blew by him. Or her.
I suddenly had this image of the skunk thinking to himself “hold…hold…come on you idiot, I see you out of the corner of my eye, come closer…closer…closer…GOT YOU!!!”
So I said “What would Chuck Norris do?” You know what he would do? He would grow a pair, get some bigger rocks, and hit that rat on the head.
I went to the backyard and got a handful of rocks about the size of my thumb. This skunk is going DOWN!!
I crept back and looked around the car and the skunk was gone. Uh oh. He trapped me. The hunter became the hunted. At this point, I froze. The skunk could be anywhere since it was so dark. Under the car by my feet. In the bushes next to the top of the driveway. Hiding behind the garbage bag.
So I did what Chuck Norris would do, I ran back into the house and shut the door.
About 5 seconds later a guy on a bike collecting empty cans and bottles came by to look in my recyclable container. I assume that is what scared the skunk away.
So the lesson learned? Put my garbage in a barrel. And use bigger rocks.
