If at First...

They're Back! The little furry things with black and white stripes, and this time they have followed me to work. My office is out in the trailer trash section of our work complex, where we have set up a several modular units because we grew too large for our building. Now I realize that there is some benefits to dieting.

Well, a family of skunks have moved in under one of the units and they let us know every now and then that they are in the neighborhood by letting off a little squirt here and there. Well, even folks in my trailer trash part of the world had enough of that so they became determined to put an end to these skunk's doctrine of manifest destiny.

Of course they came to me to address the problem because the stories of my adventures with these wily critters have become legendary. Well, more specifically, the tales of my wife's release program have kept the crowds going at the water cooler. So obviously they demanded that my wife and I should team up to get rid of the skunks. I flatly refused. Not because I didn't think that I couldn't catch the little guys, on the contrary, I knew that I could, which was the problem. The difficulty being, as President Bush found out, is the exit strategy. I knew all about the shock and awe with the guns a blazing, but my removal strategies, though I think are quite efficient, have been criticized by the leftist media (my wife's blog).

So, I left our grounds crew supervisor on his own on this one, though, I did give him a lot of advise of actually how to proceed in the operation, of which he ignored most of. This was something that we all would soon regret.

First of all, he bought a trap that could have caught a bear. Oh boy, wouldn't that have been fun if we showed up one morning with a bear in our trap. I mean, a skunk could perform a highwire circus act in there, being able to wave his bushy little tail anywhere he darned well pleased. Next, he placed the trap down a long narrow corridor between buildings with only one way in and one way out. I guess he thought that it would be wise to corner these guys down a long dark alley. Obviously, he hadn't done his homework on war strategy. This may work with destroying tanks in urban warfare, but it only helps a skunk's howitzer when it only needs to aim it's barrel in one direction (effective use of foreshadowing and figurative language, my high school English teacher would be proud of me).

Thinking that this may cause some sort of problem for himself (but I think, not really realizing what this problem could be) he tied a rope onto the trap, leaving the untied end out in the open, out of the alley. Could he have been thinking, "hey, instead of walking up to this trap where I can be sprayed, I will pull the trap to me bouncing it over hard ground, with every tug bringing the trap ever so much closer to myself." Get the visual.

There's not much left to the story. The skunk was caught and the detonation occurred right under my window. Needless to say, we have not seen the grounds guy since then.

I guess this supports the change that I have made to an old adage, "if at first you don't succeed...DON'T BECOME A SKUNK TRAPPER!!!!

Hobo Update

Yes we are well into Hobo spider season again. This year we have moved slightly from the "dad would you squash this one...and that one... and oh, that one for me" strategy. Oh, there is still plenty of that that goes on, but this year we have also have made a small investment (into the six figures) on sticky traps. We have them laid out everywhere. It is like we have actually mined our own house. We ourselves are in constant danger of trapping our selves, and these things really do stick. I always fear that somehow, I will get one stuck to the side of my face with at least a dozen or so spiders stuck there with me. You know, they don't die right away when they get caught on these things. You can watch them do push ups for many days after they get caught. So the last thing that I would want would be to have a full aerobics class going on next to my nostrils as they try to get a piece of me in a counter attack.

We usually place these traps in strategic locations where we know they like to roam, kind of the 'hobo highways' for a lack of a better term. Regardless of how many we catch they love to follow certain paths. They just keep piling up on top of each other on these traps. There is a series of traps at the bottom of our door in the laundry room. Every day I count how many we are getting on the trap. Until yesterday. I went down to get a fresh spider count and the traps were gone.

I guess that we need to replace the traps when we reach 45 on them, otherwise, they can walk off on their own with the trap.

Catch and Release

Keeping with the White Trash theme, my office is in a group of trailers outside our main office complex. One of my fellow co-workers in an adjacent trailer came into my office and said that he had heard a cough and some scratching underneath his office. We quickly surmised that we are dealing with a skunk or some other nefarious critter. He asked me if I could bring my trap and my wife. Not catching on at first, I asked, "Why that combo?" He said, "You know, the catch and release program, where you catch the skunk and then you have your wife release it."

OH, the pain of stories that never die.

If you are one of the very few that have not heard of this infamous story, please go to belligerentblogging.blogspot.com and looked under past posts labeled 'Creatures' and look for the story called 'The Skunk'. And then someday, when the statute of limitations has expired and the gag order is lifted, I will be able to tell my side of the story.