Life is a constant battle between good and evil, right and wrong, God and his most infamous wanna-be, Satan. Even the best of us, under the spell of a mid-summer moon, will wander over to the wrong side of the tracks now and again.
Chug, the large male German Shepherd so named for his distinct style of dining, had a date with a skunk last night. As beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, so is odor in the nostrils of the sniffer, and she must have been one fine looking mammal for him to overlook her particularly putrid choice of perfume. He apparently brought her home to meet the family, because the stench permeated every nook and cranny of the house and sent me gagging, coughing, and crying outside where things were no fresher. She was a bashful young thing. No amount of poking and prodding in corners and under couches could flush her out. Her lingering perfume was the only sign she had visited.
Not convinced that immersing Chug in 80 gallons of tomato juice in the bathtub would erase the remnants of his nighttime folly, I sprayed him down with every other deodorizer I could find in the cleaning cupboard to no avail. Fortunately, unlike many poor life choices, we will only have to live with the effect of this one until it eventually fades away into a distant memory.
The lesson in this is: If something smells rotten, it probably is, and no amount of ketchup will make it taste better. Don’t let romance and the moon convince you otherwise.
