Went coon hunting one night. Dogs bayed pretty quick, and I'm thinking "this is GREAT. Don't have to walk 5 miles" We get to where the dogs are. 4 dogs, all looking up different trees. This concerned me, especially since none of the trees was more than 4 inches in diameter, and probably less than 20 feet tall, and OBVIOUSLY had no raccoon in them. While my step-dad was examining the tops of the little trees, I was the first that noticed one of the dogs kept running to the trees the other three were looking up, doing their best to show us the monster raccoon they'd treed for us in those twigs. I was hoping in earnest that an old wily coon had marked the tree on them, but they seemed rather earnest and were not swayed. But each time the one dog changed which tree she thought the coon might be in, she'd look down. Mind you, this was a high priced AKC registered champion coon dog behaving this way. "This ain't right" I said to my step dad and our neighbor, Mr. Stout. I got closest first, and apparently, close enough to startle whatever was making the one dog look down occasionally. Ring, the tree swapping champion coon dog, suddenly dives into the leaves and into a stump hole, and comes out swinging something which she hit me in both shins with about 4 times before I recognized the black and white colors, and the blue fog was rising. Too late for me, but my step-dad and our neighbor took off and left me there. I tried to take off too, but ran into a rather large bramble that ripped my light off and gave me some wicked scratches, but I didn't care. There was not enough acreage between me and that skunk so I kept running until I hit the fence, net wire with a barbed wire top strand, doing an end-over and landing on my face in standing water. I was cut, scraped, wet, bruised, and most of all STINKY.
The temperature that night was about 25 degrees F, I was soaking wet, but no way was Mr. Stout going to let me ride inside his Jeep, despite the fact I usually rode in the back with the dogs anyway where there was no upholstery to be concerned about. I rode home like a hood ornament while they (Mr. Stout, my step-dad, and the dogs) enjoyed the wonderful heat in one of the few jeeps in our area that actually had a heater. My mother turned on the light in the front yard when we pulled up and stepped out on the front porch, because we were home a lot earlier than we were expected. I didn't get off the hood yet, and she's telling me where the wash tub was, and that there's no way I'm coming in the house until I'm covered in tomato juice. A tomato juice bath outside in 25 degree weather is NOT fun. It was easily a week before I was allowed to enter a room where my mother was. My teachers weren't real impressed with me either, nor my classmates.
Some might understand why I might have an innate hatred of skunks now.
will you train our outside cats for a fee? The wife feeds them so much (when I'm not around) that they have no desire or need to hunt mice or vermin. I don't doubt that they invite the other critters in to help them out with all the food that shows up in their bowls! And yet the wife complains when she finds evidence of mice in her garage. 
