So, my little 3 year old boy comes up to me at dusk last night excited and tells me there's a monster outside in the front yard. I asked "Is it a deer?", he said "No,,,Monster". I go look and see nothing so I tell him we have no monsters and he can go to sleep without worrying. A few minutes later I get my special blacklight flashlight and go out on a scorpion patrol. When I get to the side of the house that faces the woods, I see a fresh dug hole going under my slab...much bigger than a frog hole I say to myself. (I'm one of those that if I believe I'm by myself, I'll talk out loudly sometimes to myself.
) Bravely peeking into the hole, I see a few white hairs just under the bottom edge of my slab. Uh-oh, skunk. I ran and got my shotgun, fired up the gator, darnit, had to stop to air up the front 2 tires and then proceeded to drive over to the "scene of the crime" and parked with the lights glaring at the hole. "Now what?" I ask myself. The first attempt to conjure up said skunk involved about a 10 second squirt of wasp spray and running back to gator to get ready......nothing doing...for about 5 minutes. Remembering I had some old fireworks stashed, I went and got the only smoke grenade I still had and lit it and threw it in the hole which qualifies as 2nd attempt. It fizzled for a few seconds and then popped. (Probably due to being about 5 years old)....5 minutes later, still no skunk coming out of hole. 3rd attempt involved twisting the fuses of some bigger than normal firecrackers together, lighting, and throwing into hole. Bam, bam, and then the wasp spray catches on fire (small fire) and burns the grass around the edge of the hole and I thought "For Darn sure that'll bring it out"...5 minutes go by and still nothing. By this time, I'm starting to worry that maybe the critter scurried off while I was inside digging around for fireworks, ammo, filling tires with air or whatever. So, my next attempt (4th if you're counting) involved dragging the water hose over and shoving down the hole. Yes, brave I was because I just knew he was gonna come out mad and spray me. I turned on the water wide open (WFO to all those who ride motorcycles fast) and waited some more. With all those 5 minute waiting interludes, I was thinking over my plan of what to do if he did come out....after about 5 more minutes he finally got mad enough to finally come out and immediately took off running around the house. The race was on, me in my shorts and T shirt cramming the gator into gear and firewalling it with one hand steering and the other holding my shotgun. Chased him around 3 sides of the house, up my driveway, between the 2 trucks (that belong to my FIL), under the big tractor, and finally on into the big field behind the home. My goal was to shepherd the thing as far away as I could get him to go and let him have it. I managed to get him about 100 yards away when said skunk must've got tired and decided to stop, turn his head and make a stand. I figured this was far enough and since I had already let the neighbors know what was going on if they heard any shooting, I .....well... The rest of the story isn't much to talk about except that my trusty Remington 1100 semi-automatic 12 gage is good for more than just dove hunting if you know what I mean. Now I'd like y'all to know that I consider myself a humane person, and in trying to be humane, I made the mistake of making sure he was properly dispatched and got a bit too close (even though I was upwind) and it still smelled to high heavens. It was like spraying cologne into the air and then walking through it. I had to remove my T shirt and shorts on the back porch and go jump in the shower. By then I was too tired to do any more scorpion patrolling but I should've done one of FG19's patented nakey rain dances because we are getting drier than a west Texas popcorn toot here west of Giddings.
End of story.
