Skunked

The Cove Restaurant in Buffalo City, WI is popular, especially on Fridays with their all-you-can-eat fish fry.  Trish, Heidi and I, had the standard fish fry; Gary and Michael went for the 'all'.  Heidi's my niece, Gary's her husband, and Michael's their son.  Our RV is parked in Heidi and Gary's yard, our first stop after our cross-country trek from Taos.  I've gotta say this may be our best campground ever. It's flat, has a full-on view of the Mississippi and the bluffs on the MN side, electrical and water hookups, the price is right and the owners are great people to be with.

It was dark when we returned from the restaurant and cranked up the fire pit.  We'd been sitting around the fire, shooting the breeze for awhile, when suddenly Artie and Ranger took off at full gallop, headed for the front of the house.  We looked over to where they were headed and saw a string of small critters. Black and white critters.  There were 7 of them: mom and 6 cubs.  They were headed for the front porch and hesitated only briefly when the dogs appeared.

Trish, of course, was hollering 'Stop!' as loud as she could - which wasn't quite loud enough as it turned out.  Ranger got a partial blast; Artie escaped unscathed.  The skunks wandered around the house a few minutes, then continued on their way.  Ranger didn't react much at first and we didn't realize he'd taken a hit until he was back in the RV and proceeded to rub his face vigorously on our clothing and bedding.  Oh boy!

Trish got right on it, wiping Ranger's affected parts with anything and everything that might alleviate the stench.  She then got online and researched how to remove the smell.  Tomato juice, although long thought to do the trick, does not.  It's worthless.  What does work is a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish soap - applied as soon as possible after the incident.  We didn't have the first 2 items in stock, and there was no reasonably close place to get them at 10 PM in the evening.

This AM we hooked up and hauled ass up to the Twin Cities and our next campground, stopping along the way to get the dog-wash ingredients.  It's now 7 PM, Ranger has had 2 applications of the magic potion, and we've done 4 loads of laundry.  One more load of laundry and we're fairly sure the incident will be a bad memory instead of a bad smell.