This was in my mailbox this morning. Yes, he really does write like this.
I dedicate it to all of you still living in the ‘hood.
As you all know I have been struggling with the cold apartment since the boiler broke. Well, had a little bit of a scare today when the dogs woke me up to the most heinous smell a smell very much like burning insulation. Now, with the apartment at about twenty five degrees, I've been running electric heaters, so, 100+ year old house, electric heaters, burning smell, what did I think? Old wiring, caught on fire or something quite close to fire. Thus, on a search I go for issues, checking all the breakers and fuse boxes for blown, hot, or warm fuses, sniffing everywhere I can, despite the eye watering smell, and keeping a keen eye out for more subtle signs, such as flames licking out from electrical outlets and fixtures. Fearing the worse I call my friend and landlord Brian for assistance, which promptly arrives, stoned and inebriated, but quite awake.
While Brian goes to wake the downstairs tenant, and possibly to share a blunt, I continue in the basement alone, just like the first expendable character in each and every horror movie you have ever seen. Or maybe like Yeoman Johnson in Star Trek the original series.
Well, while Brian is still upstairs rousing Bobby the neighbor, I am confronted with a site that is fit to strike horror into ANY man, no matter how strong, brave, or disciplined. A black horror, the specter of which is found locked deep in the primordial brain stem memory of every mammal whose ancestors had struggled up from the ooze on our planet (save possible for one) millennia ago.
A fierce member of the order of Fissipedia, and the family of Mustelidae. Non other than Mephitis Mephitis! From the Latin for vile and gaseous! The horrible, North American Striped Skunk!
Grunting and squealing the little blight on humanity charged our hero, who, like all good students of chivalry and honor, fled for his EVER-LOVING life screaming like a child.
Now, yes, I knew deep down, at some level, that as long as his business end was facing away from me I was in no danger, but any semblance of rational thought was stripped from me, leaving nothing but pure atavistic terror.
Up the stairs I fled, barely controlling my bodily functions to be confronted by Brian and Bobby, looking at me with mixed wonder, concern, and, God curse them to the deepest pit of Gehenna, Amusement!
Now, it seems, that there is only one species on the WHOLE PLANET that does not share my florid description of fear and respect for the this striped terror. I alluded to this above, yes, its true, the amazingly fearsome, loud, and cosmically stupid....
Beagle
Yes, our beloved howler from down below, the bane of sound sleep everywhere, Snoops. Snoops had not only encountered our effluviant nemesis outside, and gotten sprayed not once, but TWICE in such close proximity to the house as to render the stench SO strong it was unrecognizable as Skunk Perfume, in addition our microcephalic quadruped had CHASED THE LITTLE BLIGHTER INTO OUR BASEMENT THROUGH HIS DOGGIE DOOR!
So now, as I sit here vainly trying to breath through my mouth, with all the windows open in my already frigid abode (thermometer reads 17 degrees), Bobby is down below armed with my meager supply of bloody mary mix attempting to clean up his most useless example "MAN's Best Friend", Brian has donned one of his painters gas masks and is trying to coax the Lord of ALL Foulness out from the basement.
So with no further whining, our story ends for now. Oh, wait, it seems that the smell has dissipate enough that I can recognize it now as Skunk Ground Zero ou de toilette!!!
So, to keep what semblance of Sanity and self respect I have, I am heading downstairs, wearing my scuba goggles and dust mask, to attempt to assist my now even more stoned (yes he did tokeup with Bobby a little while ago) friend and landlord, in reclaiming our now virtually uninhabitable abode.
Good Night.
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