Pungent Polecat or Curious Chupacabra?

 National Geographic skunks are cute.
Real ones? Not so much.

You may want to back away from your computer a bit before you read any further. This week the Tumbleweeds do not smell nice. 


What's black, white and stinky all over and does not want to be BFF with Jasmine? Skunk. Polecat. Stinktier.


Our crazy, sweet, wild, obedient dog decided to ambush some weeds to find out what smelled so darn good. I'm sure a dog that eats goose turds like they were french fries, finds eau de Pepe Le Pew delightful.

It all started innocently enough. Jasmine and I took our last walk of the evening behind a warehouse complex, in Mesquite, Texas. We were parked for the night at the consignee, where we would deliver in the morning. The property was surrounded by fields and lots of grass; it was quiet and we were the only people there, a rare find for us.


I had her on leash, since we are still practicing that particular skill. Picture trying to walk the Tasmanian Devil and you have a pretty good idea what it looks like. It was dark and she was on hyper alert, as always, ready to attack tree stumps and boulders at the drop of a hat. She kept pulling, yanking, and lunging to get these nefarious threats and I was getting tired of it. So when she started pulling so hard she was standing on her hind feet, I let go of the leash, ready to laugh when she realized it was just a clump of tall weeds. The laugh was on me.


She stormed into the weeds, thrashed around and came out foaming at the mouth like Cujo, flinging drool everywhere and smelling like a rancid Chupacabra. In fact, the smell wasn't like the skunk odor I was used to from roadkill. You know that smell? It was different somehow, acrid like burnt rubber and so strong I could taste it. I never saw the creature in the weeds, maybe it was a Chupacabra.

From Fox News. This is the stuff they
report on when they aren't looking
for Obama's birth certificate.

I did a little research on the Google but never came up with any other aninmal that sprays in self defense like a skunk. 


Fact: There are seven major volatile compounds that make up skunk spray. As shown here:

No idea what this means. 

But I don't need fancy chemistry to know that they all combine to stink like crazy and attach their nasty little compounds up my nose and everywhere else. Jasmine got sprayed right in the mouth, the poor little dummy; I wonder if she'll try to make friends with a skunk again. Probably.

As you can tell, the smell is really bothering her.