Dinner, Dogs, Dead skunk

Last night Iffy, Sara and I went to dinner at Lajitas (http://www.lajitas.com/) a resort "town", near the park (think brand new, just built looking ghost-town) for the purpose of joining a few others in celebration of our neighbors birthday/promotion. It is a nice place, but totally bizarre and surreal. It's a huge built up area with a golf course, nice outdoor seating areas, patios, etc. And it doesn't seem like there is ever anyone there. I should also mention that the town of Lajitas has a beer drinking goat named Clay Henry III for a mayor.

Sara was very well behaved, she usually is when we are out, lots of new stuff to look at. I had to take her outside once during the evening to feed her. We sat under a stone gazebo structure over looking the golf course and I watched bats fly around catching bugs while she ate.

We got home around 11:00 (yes we did drive an hour to have dinner, that's what you do when you live in Big Bend) and let the dogs out to do their business. I was in our room putting Sara to bed when I heard a loud ruckus. Iffy was calling Oscar to come in using the tone that I so well recognize, the one that says, "Oscar, drop what you are doing and get your butt in the house RIGHT NOW!" I went to see what the commotion was all about. I was met by the back door with both a really bad smell, and Elsie who suddenly looked like a rabid dog, with liquid dripping off her face. Yep, they met a skunk. The term "sprayed" by a skunk really is what it sounds like. Oscar in the meantime was in the backyard playing around with the now dead skunk. Looks like the park is down a skunk. Don't tell the rangers!

While Elsie got the brunt of the spray, they both stink and were corralled in the laundry area over night as I did not want the aroma getting on the furniture. I have driven over dead skunks numerous times of course, and thought I was familiar with the smell, but when it is on your dogs and in your house, it smells a lot more like burning plastic than I thought it would. Hopefully most of the smell will be gone before we set off for our car trip with the dogs on Thursday.
The smell is luckily not that overpowering, I've already gotten used to it enough that I don't really notice it until I leave the house and come back in, then it hits me like a brick wall.

It was only a matter of time I suppose until the dogs had a bad run in with some sort of wildlife here. I'm just glad that it was a skunk and not a mountain lion. Hopefully they won't ever have that run in.

p.s In case you thought for a moment that Oscar might be smart, let me tell you that he is still barking at the skunk, yes the dead one. Iffy threw it a few feet over the fence last night, it is still laying there apparently causing a big threat to the safety of the backyard so Oscar is doing his best to scare it away.