Expression: 'My sister's dog got "skunked" two weeks ago.'

[Tom]

Hi

Could you please tell me what happens when a dog gets "skunked"?

[Alan]

Me too.

A
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English as a Second Language
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[Yankee]

You two are extremely fortunate that you don't know what "got skunked" means.

A skunk is a small animal. The German word for this animal is very appropriate: "Stinktier". Literally translated that means "stink animal". Skunks are well-known in the US. Apparently there are also skunks in Germany -- I smelled the distant stink of skunk on a couple of occasions when I lived there.

Anyway, when these animals feel very threatened, they raise their tails, aim and shoot an unbelievably foul-smelling spray at the source of the threat. It's an extremely effective defense. To call the smell "foul and disgusting" is an understatement, in my opinion. The Cambridge Dictionary refers to this smell as "strong and unpleasant". The editors of the Cambridge Dictionary obviously have never been "skunked" -- otherwise they'd have attempted to use a much stronger adjective than "unpleasant". At close range, the smell is disgusting enough to make you throw up violently. Once something has been "skunked" (i.e. contaminated with skunk spray), it's next to impossible to remove the stink. Usually the most you can hope for is a reduction in the degree of stink.

Both my sister and brother-in-law were away on business trips when their dog made his unfortunate decision to sniff the hind quarters of an "interesting looking", black and white critter he ran into outside. The skunk apparently scored a direct hit at very close range on the left side of the dog's mouth. Since no other adults were home, the job of "odor control" was mine alone.

This happened two weeks ago. Though the stink is much less now, the dog still smells bad. When something is directly contaminated by skunk spray, the stink from the contaminated object (or animal) also permeates the air. I couldn't wash or "tomato-juice" the dog outside because it was too cold, so that had to be done in the house. It took a week to air out the house afterwards -- even though the dog had been restricted to one room.

Here is a Wikipedia write-up on skunks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk

Amy

[Prezbucky]

Skunks are hereby inducted into the Axis of Evil.
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