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Close to Home: Recipe for ‘spaghetti dog" Requires one Skink, |
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| There is skunk, the noun, a small striped animal that lives in the woods. And then there is skunk, the verb, as we learned one recent night at our house. It means to spray all over with nastiness. Or to skunkify, as we now say. Our dog, Samo, was recently skunkified, and then he proceeded to skunkify the living room couch and the dining room settee. Soon the whole house had been skunkified. It was all funky skunky, as we put it. It was 8 o"clock at night and we were tired. Too tired for skunkification, or its removal, de–skunkification. So I did what any skunkified soul would do in the modern age: I Googled skunk, scent and remove. What came back was just what I was fearing: tomato juice. Sadly, we had none. We did have a brand new can of tomato paste, however, which we deemed fit for the task. We headed out into the muggy, skunky, mosquito–thick night with the paste, a brush and the dog, to perform the task of de–skunkification. We scrubbed, scoured and worked away at his poor polka–dot coat (yes, a Dalmatian) until it had worked up quite a tomato–ey lather. We hosed him down, smelled him and then started over anew. The poor chap was being very compliant with this treatment, as if he knew, deep in his spotted heart ( His tongue is spotted, why not his organs? pointed out one family member), it had to be done. Finally, we felt we had it under control. The funky skunkiness had been replaced by a funky, skunky tomato smell. We then soaped him up and dried him off and combed baking soda into his coat. If he wasn't a dog, he might be a pie, observed one of us. Or a delicious stew, said another. Soon, however, it became clear that tomato could be a poison of its own. One does not really want a tomato stew curled up on one's couch, after all. It is like we have a spaghetti dog! someone shouted, giggling. So it is. Samo is fairly well de–skunkified. The couch is minimally skunky. And now we are living with a darling, pink–hued tomato dog pie running around in our midst. We have adapted. The cats even seem to like it. Meanwhile, the skunk (the noun) has been hiding under the front porch. And I have a feeling he'd like to cut and run, proving to anyone interested that it isn't the worst thing one could do in this world.
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