A Close Call

I just had to preempt myself from what I expected to post today to relate a fabulous little gem of an incident yesterday morning while most of you (if you’re half sane that is) were still asleep, regardless of time zone. Well, except for our dear and quite polite neighbors in Great Britain. Then again, I may be wrong. Correcting course…

Anyway, the whole thing so totally blew my mind that I blanked it out until last night before I laid it on Di. She, of course, was completely enraptured by the brief adventure as well as my skill at self-extraction, and replied (lovingly), “Ok. Go watch the chicken. And don’t screw it up.” We have been here before, and the wife was angry that day, my friends.

Luckily, this vignette is completely unrelated to any spontaneous rage on Mrs. Rants’ part. Instead, this is a picture-perfect example of the completely incongruous, needle-across-the-record, “WTF” kind of whackjob shit that only – only! – can happen to yours truly. As we like to segue with in the Army, “So there I was…”

It was probably about 0415 yesterday. Dark o’ clock in the morning. I’d managed to brew coffee, disinfect my teeth, and scrape my face by Braille successfully. Note: we have electricity, but no amount of voltage will open my eyes at 0400-ish. I poured a cup of joe, extracted my one morning cigarette, and stepped onto the back porch to apply the chemical paddles to my heart. That task complete, and the lung-butter expectorating finished, I was just standing there, sipping coffee, puffing groggily, minding my own business.

Then shit got exciting.

Straight out of some dark shrub stage left (my left, your right) comes this enormous black and white cat. At least that’s what the brain part of BrainRants registered in the first .228 seconds. Said animal proceeds to just crawl its bad self all up into the terra cotta pot I toss meat bones in for later garden use and begin helping me clean the fuckers. As the black and white stripey pattern soaked in deeper, I naturally froze, trying to recall anything of value inside my head that might possibly be of value in extracting myself from a close encounter with a skunk. This is precisely what I got:

[Insert sound of wind rushing lazily through a large, empty space]

The good news is that the rapid-fire mental pictures I generated (after the rushing wind part) as to what would happen to me caused me to freeze still a bit longer. The skunk was apparently not opposed to secondhand smoke from my Marlboro Ultra Light 100, but I worried that a sudden move would directly translate to enactment of the movie in my head. That RantTube video went something like this:

BrainRants accidentally causes skunk terror, and with fluffy tail raised jets a steamy, pungent jet of musk which catches Rants mid-chest, chin, and coffee-swilling suck. Instant neurotoxin reaction occurs, making me projectile vomit on self, dropping to knees, and triggering fight-or-flight bowel evacuation. These movements and musk-trumping stench cause skunk to freak out, empty glands, and flee. Rants, in fetal position in the dark, continues to vent interior contents onto self and porch. Eventually autonomic system relents as Rants is unconscious. Five hours later, Mrs. Rants is awakened by the powerful stench and opens back door just in time to find MP’s hauling Stupid Husband away for public intoxication*… at 0900-ish.

The awesome news is that the RantTube video remained a work of fiction. I got back inside and reviewed my options. Sadly, I can’t get caught performing I’m not allowed to participate in rodent control. Eventually I figured if the stupid fucker wanted to suck my used BBQ rib bones, fine with me. I can produce powerful stenches myself, though not on command, so I judged the skunk to have the upper hand, given the restrictions and all.

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* MP’s – Military Police – are widely known in the Army to not be the sharpest of tools in the box, so being arrested for PI in a cloud of skunk musk would not be beyond the pale.