First, I've heard that some Christian families had sold everything expecting the Rapture (The Rape?) and gave it all to Harold Camping's church expecting to be gone in Saturday's Rapture. So, is he now going to give it all back? A spokesman has said that he really doesn't know yet. Doesn't know yet? Should there really be any question about it? I'm thinking, Jail Time for Fraud, or just for common sense?
Okay anyway, if God exists any and everywhere, wouldn't God most likely be easiest to experience in Nature? Regardless, you can get a feeling for the Godly, in Nature. But one does have to beware of the terrible possibilities along with the wonderful ones. That is, the wildlife. Christians and religionists tend to forget, we are animals, to the animals, we are meat. Carnivores, Bears, wolves, coyote packs, snakes, even people of a criminal or unstable nature in the woods, and skunks....
Skunks?
Oh yes. Have you ever had to deal with that? If you haven't, good, you're lucky. If you have, you know. I need say no more. That is a nasty thing to deal with. Small dogs, especially Terriers, have been known to die from getting sprayed by a skunk, if it hits them where they get their lungs coated with it. I can't even imagine what a nasty death that would be.
I've only had a few run ins myself. The worst was my German Shepherd. He came home one day reeking to high Heaven as they say. But it was obvious to me, that he didn't really get a full dose, only a partial one, and that was bad enough. What gets you isn't so much the smell, it's the smell, over time.
After a while, especially if you get away from it for a little while, then come back to it, like you get the dog in the bath tub, leave a kid with them to hold them in there, then run around the house looking for something to cut the smell while you make phone calls to family and friends, or hit the internet quickly to find a quick fix, and all you come up with is someone saying, douse it with quarts of tomato juice. I can tell you from experience, that doesn't work. That one time, someone did come up with something weird, and I tried it, and after a few repeated baths, it kind of worked, but not really.
Now the funniest run in I had was at Flaming Geyser Park in King County, Washington. It was a work picnic for my wife at the time. We both had picnic's that day, one in the morning for my work, and one in the afternoon for hers. I worked for a high tech group doing data transaction management, computer and web site work; she was a horse trainer and riding instructor. My group were techies, her's were cowboys and horse people. Both of us wanted to pull teeth at one another's picnic. Mine paid all the bills, but of course, we had to leave mine with people I had fun with, as were the kids, and go to hers where we were pretty bored, but had to be there to make the clients happy. Mine dealt with coworkers, hers were kowtowing to clients. Mine was more fun, simply put.
So while she was off talking to clients, I was with my son and daughter, trying to have fun. They were bored, I was bored. While we were sitting near some bushes and trees on a blanket at one point, eating food and just hanging out, my young daughter said, "Dad, look! How cute!"
I turned to look at what she was looking and talking about and there, the last thing I would ever have expected to see, about five feet in front of us, was a mama skunk and her three little skunketts. Yes, unbelievably cute, but, I mean, I couldn't believe it. Like a cartoon character just hit with a baseball bat, I momentarily saw stars, just thinking about driving home with two kids (hopefully not two kids and a dad) reeking of skunk spray; not to mention what mom would have had to say ("How could you have let this happen?" did I say we're not married anymore?).
All I could do was say, "Don't move. Don't talk, or talk softly. Don't move quickly." We just sat there. The mama skunk looked at us and decided we were neither stupid or harmful and just continued on her way. My son wanted to bolt, being the older of the two kids. But I forced him to not move with a look. The skunks, luckily, made their way from one part of the foliage to another, at which point I said, okay, slowly get up and moveeee away from here."
And we did. One of the closest calls I've ever had. More scary than the parachute I had fail on me one time with a "cigarette roll" (compression twist) "function" ("malfunction" I don't know why we called malfunctions "functions").
Even more fear invoking than the attack of the Sea Cucumber I weathered through once at forty feet down while SCUBA diving off of Fox Island near the Narrows Bridge off of Tacoma, Washington.
However, not all of us are so lucky. Are we? I know because some people out there are nodding their heads who have been through a skunk attack.
Well, good news is available. Here is the solution for a skunk attack. It's not perfect, it's not immediate like another spray, it's not something you can make up and store for a possible attack, but it's something, and it works.
Here you go, a Skunk Spray Decontamination mixture that works, better living through chemical interactions:
1 quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide
quarter cup of backing soda
1 or 2 teaspoons of liquid dish soap
All the best to you in your dire time of need, should you ever need it.
Here is some more information on the topic if you suddenly have the desire to increase your education on Skunks:
From Science Friday at NPR
Here are a couple of other sites:
http://home.earthlink.net/~skunkremedy/home/
http://users.humboldt.edu/wfwood/chemofskunkspray.html
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