Dan the Man had decided he was going to bunk with our cabin that night. Dan was the Head Counselor, so he really didn't have any permanent accommodations; He just roamed around camp bunking with different people every night.
My counselor Sean had gone to Liberty University, the same school Dan went to. They both sat up telling us stories about stuff they had done at school.
It was about 1:15 in the morning when Sean stopped talking in mid sentence. He began to inhale through his nose, than started coughing.
"GEEZ! I think there's a skunk outside! Do you guys smell that?"
Sure enough, there was a foul odor in the air. We started to try and cover our face so we couldn't smell it. While we did that though, Sean started to rant.
"Brett put some traps out there for the raccoons didn't he? C'mon Brett, we could have told you there was more than just raccoons out there. Any fool knows you don't trap a skunk! Geez Brett..."
This was fairly amusing to me, but then Sean did something a little drastic.
"Guys! Get out of bed. We're going skunk hunting."
Before I knew what was happening, we were all out of bed, some of us in our pajamas, others of us in less than that, and we were gearing up for a great skunk hunt. Sean shoved his walking stick into my tired hands, and began to pass out other weapons. Sean had a light and a nerf bow, while Chaz, Dan and Titus had flashlights and courage.
We began a sweep of the porch. Everyone shined their lights under the porch, while I prepared to do battle with the creature. We moved off the porch, and the scent started getting stronger. Sean was suddenly seized by a brilliant idea.
"Wait here", he said, shoving the nerf bow into Dan's hands. He dashed inside, and returned with a military grade gas mask.
We continued the hunt, but I started chuckling at the absurdity of it. Sean taking point with his gas mask, Chaz and Titus with flashlights right behind him, Dan searching diligently with a head-mounted lamp and nerf bow, and me in the back with my walking stick. I would have laughed out loud if it weren't so late.
We kept searching for the creature, but it remained elusive. Sean then noted something that made us pause.
"You know the best way to get rid of skunk smell is tomato juice right? Well... I'm allergic to tomatoes. I didn't think about that."
As fun as it would have been to find the skunk and put it in the girls cabin, we decided to retire to bed. Was it worth the life (or at least the smell) of one of our companions? No, no it was not.
So if any of you readers are ever in my neck of the woods, let me know. We can go skunk hunting. We probably won't catch anything, but hey... do we really want to?
