SKUNK!!

Knock on the door!

Look out the window!

The police are here and there's more than one. I don't think about the kids are grandkids being in a wreck. They all have cell phones glued to their hands and unless their thumbs are disabled they can text me.

I'm not sure how the FIB or is it FBI or BIF works but they could use the local police to come and take Mr. B away for his radical views on everything. I've been expecting it any day and I try to keep my lap top ready to throw into the bag, a clean pair of under britches and my toiletries in a tote bag, along with my favorite flip-flops. We all know he can't survive with me so I'll have to go with him when whatever alphabet soup form of the government comes for him.

So he goes to the door and the policeman asks politely if he can enter our back yard because a skunk has been spotted out there. I quickly warn him that one of our tom cats is black and white so please don't sent Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw to that great skunk kingdom in the sky. And then I ask him if the skunk is a liberal or a conservative because that could have a bearing on how it could be treated in our back yard.

How did the skunk vote in the last election? Does it believe in the new way to teach math or does it still make it's little skunk babies learn the multiplication tables? Before the policeman and policewoman can go in my yard we have think about what is about to happen, don't we?

There was no skunk smell and no black and white critters in my back yard. The police folks left and I breathed a sigh of relief. Thirty minutes later they were back. The skunk had been spotted coming into our back yard again. This time we had two policemen and one policewoman, armed and ready to take care of a skunk.

I did worry about Mr. B going into the back yard with them. Maybe this was all a ruse to get him out of the house and put him into a black SUV out in the alley. But one whiff of the eau de skunk perfume in the yard convinced me that they weren't here for my husband the radical...but skunk, the stinkable.

The very smart lady cop stood on the seat of the picnic bench and pointed indicating that she'd seen the critter. The two brave policeman opened up the gates behind the shed and the animal promptly ran under the shed.

The thought of them getting hurt in all that stuff we store behind those gates did go through my mind and I had the insurance number dialed before I remembered it was Sunday. I did send up a prayer that the policeman didn't fall over a flower pot, the lawn mower or three broken lawn chairs and sue us or worse yet, shoot Mr. B when he fell.

Skunk was not coming out and "Here Kitty, Kitty" does not work on that particular kind of cat.

So Mr. B hooked up the water hoses and the blaster that was advertised to squirt water for one hundred feet. The policeman held the blaster, stood way back and tried to get the job done. Nothing doing! Skunk was not afraid of a little water boarding.

By now that Mr. B has seen the animal and was convinced that he...Mr. B, the radical, not skunk the stinkable...wasn't being sent off somewhere to live on bread and water, so he took the hose from the policeman, got right up next to the shed and one very angry skunk came scootin' right out the back.

I heard a pop and went to see about Mr. B, fearing that he'd been shot while trying to escape from the black SUV. He was winding up the hose and putting it away. The skunk was being toted away in a black body bag and the police people were leaving.

Mr. B came in right proud of himself but he did not smell like Stetson. Neither did my back yard. It took more than five hours for it to go away.  I'm just glad that it's gone and Mr. B hasn't been hauled away. But I'm most happy that neither one of the policemen cited me for a cubby hole full of hazardous materials back behind that shed!