Pepé Le Pew

Have you ever woken up to a smell so horrible that your eyes are watering and you're gagging and trying not to vomit but you just can't pinpoint what it is?

That's what happened to us last Wednesday morning.

At around 6:00 in the morning on Wednesday I awoke to a smell. It wasn't at all what you'd expect a skunk to smell like.  In fact I immediately assumed something was burning. It smelled like burning rubber and I looked everywhere to find the source. I also checked our smoke and carbon monoxide alarms because I couldn't understand if something was burning why nothing was going off.

I woke my husband and together neither of us could find any evidence of something melting or burning so we assumed the furnace must be malfunctioning and, concerned, we turned off the furnace, took the kids and the cat and left.

From my parents' house, where we ended up staying for 3 nights, we called a furnace repair person who went into our stinky house and came out to announce that he thought we had a skunk.

Apparently skunk doesn't smell like skunk when it's a direct hit. It smells pretty much like death and it's a very difficult smell to get rid of.

On Thursday the skunk family was found under my next door neighbour's house. Unfortunately, living in a townhouse, we share a wall and both her place and ours smell the same.

So far we've washed all of our clothes, sprayed all the furniture down with skunk smell removal spray, placed bags of charcoal and bowls of vinegar around the house, and wiped things down with hydrogen peroxide.

It is getting better but the smell is not gone and we're lucky that this is a warmer week because our windows have all been open while the furnace is on.

Looking on the bright side, I've never had so many conversations with our neighbour.

We may actually bond over this experience.

But I won't go as far as to thank Pepé for that. . .not even close. lol.