For the last 48 hours our house has reeked of roadkill. Sometime while we were out having a leisurely Sunday breakfast a skunk sprayed underneath our house. Olfactory investigations indicate that ground zero was somewhere roughly between our bedroom and the bathroom. This afternoon was actually the first time I was able to enter the house without a gush of eau-de-le-pew wafting up my nostrils. However, as you head closer to the back of the house, the scent becomes unmistakably stronger, and you are reminded of how effective a defense tool these suckers were dealt. Pregnancy doesn’t help either. Whether the rest of you are aware of this or not, you get a pretty gnarly case of dog-nose while you are pregnant, and can generally out-sniff one of those german sheperds they use to detect drugs at airports. Call it a gift.

You’d think that living in the city, we would be limited to your basic urban disturbances (which I have kindly elaborated on to you at length in these very pages) however, not wanting to deprive us of the “rural experience,” the local wildlife has made sure that we get to deal with their wrath as well. I can only assume that the possum must have said something bitchy to the skunk, thereby causing a nasty slap-fight, ending in the skunk saying “oh yeah? Well, take this you hoochie!” and promptly turned around and sprayed her in the face. Think of it as our own little wildlife version of Jerry Springer.

Thankfully, Steve has the entire week off and was able to quickly put to use his new air compresser and nail gun, and fashioned us a wire-mesh cocoon to encase the entire underbelly of our house. The trick was making the gamble as to what was actually still under the house at the time that he sealed off the crawl-space opening. He felt confident that whatever may have been under there over the weekend was not under there today. I prayed he was right. The last thing I want to be dealing with is a skunk and a possum trapped together under our house like a bad version of Survivor.

But tonight, as I was reading Stella her bed-time stories and convincing her that she did not need her water bottle (more on this later), I heard the unmistakable sounds of something trying to either get in or out of the crawl-space. And being that the crawl-space is directly under Stella’s bed, I not only could I hear it, but I could feel it. Naturally, I sent Steve out to investigate and he came back in reporting that he saw a gigantic possum hunkered in the bushes…on the outside. Score!

Now, as long as we don’t have the rest of its family under there or our good frend Smelly McStink, I think we can call this issue closed. Unless, of course the racoons and their opposable thumbs show up and dismantle the whole set-up.