The first weekend in October, Grandma and Granddad came to visit. They had just read my latest Elon post and Granddad was itching to bring his trap– literally a cage to my figurative cage match.
Now it must be noted, Granddad has a long and illustrious career battling skunks. Over the years we’ve lost a few details of his most epic skunk story, but we’ll improvise…
Years ago, his boss of many years had a skunk problem under his home in the hills of Los Gatos. There was some story about his sons eating in their rooms and leaving food around, but this point is fuzzy. Personally, skunks just love a good crawl space.
So Granddad, or maybe just Dad at that point, offers to take care of this skunk issue. What a loyal and resourceful employee. At some stage during this situation it escalates, until he finds himself in the crawl space, wearing his Australian duster coat– yes, think Crocodile Dundee. So he’s in this cramped space and the skunks are scurrying to escape and he shoots one, but the second one is about to get away. He aims back behind him, through his own legs, and shoots a hole through the tails of his favorite coat, killing the skunk dead. Yes, for the record, Granddad is the only known witness to this story.
He then needs to bag up the skunks and dispose of them. Believe me, I’m sure his nose hairs are singed and the stench is unbearable. He must have trash bags, but he is also given a fancy shopping bag with handles by the grateful homeowners. For the sake of the story, we’re going with Neiman Marcus. So he bags these skunks up, places them in the Neiman Marcus bag, and then securely hangs the bag from his side mirror so he doesn’t have to put it in the car.
He then makes his way to downtown Los Gatos. We’ll assume he’s searching for a suitable dumpster when he gets the idea to leave the shopping bag on a bench by a bus stop. He sets his trap and then heads back to his car to watch. A few minutes later, a white-haired resident drives along in her convertible, spots the bag, jumps out, looks around, tosses it in the backseat of her car and takes off.
And a legend is born.