I was driving home from work today, and was almost to our house when I saw a dead skunk in the middle of the road. "Ooh! Maybe that's our skunk!" I exclaimed. (I often utter things aloud while driving, even though there's no one in the car to hear me. Like, "Oh no, I missed the turn!" and "Dumbass left his blinker on," and "GET OUT OF THE LEFT LANE, YOU SLOWASS BITCH.")

Now, I don't usually rejoice at the sight of roadkill. I am more likely to grimace or shudder or even, depending on the species, have a moment of mourning before shifting gears and moving on with my life. But this time I was happily hopeful. Hopeful that just maybe that was our skunk.

See, a couple weeks ago there was a smell. One that filled our house and the surrounding air. One that settled in and stayed awhile. It seemed particularly bad in the basement, but then again human noses are pretty much incapable of locating the source of a smell, so we weren't sure. In fact, we weren't even sure what it was. I proclaimed it skunky, but Rob took a few whiffs and decided the smell was "electrical."

For the record, that's probably not the best thing to tell me right before going to bed. Because I will lie awake worrying. Worrying about the house burning down. Worrying about whether or not the fire alarms will work. Worrying about the fact that we sleep nude and will there be time to get dressed? Worrying about how in the hell I'll be able to find all the cats in our smoke-filled house and get them out to safety. Worrying about what I'll do with them once we're all outside. (How can 2 people successfully hold 3 terrified housecats while also running to the neighbor to call 911 and then talking to firefighters and being examined by paramedics?) Worrying about losing everything we have. Worrying about whether the electrical smell itself is enough to kill us in our sleep. Just, in general, worrying. While Rob is, of course, soundly asleep. Fucker.

Eventually, I fell asleep, only to be awakened by the smell around 2 am. No really, it was that bad. Rob was awake too. And suddenly he broke the smelly silence, saying, "I might know what it is." There's this pipe in the basement that's connected to the old (now defunct) septic tank and, when we first moved in, it was releasing noxious fumes. It was apparently never capped off. We solved this by covering it with aluminum foil and plastic wrap and maybe even a shower cap or two. But Rob wondered, as we were lying in bed breathing a smell that was difficult to identify more specifically than BAD, if maybe the pipe was once again somehow the culprit.

"I bet that's it!" I said gleefully. And so we got out of bed and pulled on some pajamas and headed down to the basement to investigate.

"You smell it. You're the smeller," he said.

I got down on my hands and knees, eased my nose toward the pipe, and took a small preliminary sniff in order to prepare myself for the rancidity. But, nothing. So I inhaled deeper. Still nothing.

"Fuck. It's not the pipe."

We went back upstairs, dejected. I opened the outside door and sniffed. "Is it maybe worse out here?" Rob followed me onto the deck and we both sniffed. We sniffed here and there and everywhere, all over the deck. In the middle of the night. In our pajamas. And we concluded nothing. Except that it was fucking cold outside.

The next day we decided that the smell was not electrical, but surely that of a skunk. A week passed, and the smell did not subside. So we decided that perhaps the smell was that of a skunk living under our deck. At this point the stench had invaded our lives. Every room in the house smelled like skunk. The interior of my car smelled like skunk. One day I was sitting at my desk at work and I smelled skunk. I thought maybe the smell had finally taken permanent residence in my nostrils, but then I realized that the scent was coming from my coat. Basically, we reeked. It was the Week of Reek.

Just in this last week has the smell faded a bit. Every now and then we still get a godawful whiff of skunk funk, but my eyes no longer immediately water upon wakening, so that's good. We had almost convinced ourselves that maybe a skunk had sprayed near our house but not actually moved in, but then it snowed last week and we saw skunky pawprints that pranced around defiantly before heading right under the deck. Dammit.

My brother suggested we try to trap the skunk, to which I said, "Yeah? And THEN WHAT?!" Well, apparently then my brother would come over with his shotgun and shoot it (preferably downwind of our house). I suppose it's times like these that having a redneck family really comes in handy. But, I have so far been an advocate for the skunk's right to live. Although, ideally, he should exercise that right somewhere other than under our deck.

Of course, if the dumbfuck skunk got himself killed in traffic, that wouldn't be on my conscience. And so I'm hoping the skunk I saw flattened on the highway turns out to be our skunk. Or, if not, then when Grady comes out of hibernation this spring, he better kick some smelly skunk ass.