Got skunked.....got sick! (house, buy, allergies)

[Brother_Greg]

Well, I havn't been on for a while so let me tell you all what happened to me. Last Wednesday night, it was pouring down the rain and I was in the kitchen about to make a sandwich when all of a sudden this odor hit me and almost took my breath away. I knew it was a skunk but boy... it was BAD! The smell was so strong I actually looked in the sink cabinet to see if the sucker was in there. I ran to the back door and as I opened it, this horrific cloud of odor about knocked me down. I stepped out onto the deck to see where the little perpetrator was but it was already gone, leaving a trail of stink around the corner of the house and down the driveway. The neighbor's cat is always hanging around our yard so I figured the cat chased it and it sprayed.

Now here comes the interesting part. Again, this incident happened around 9:00 PM last Wednesday. My wife was at work and she had driven the only vehicle we have, so I was stuck in the house with this unbearable smell. EVERY ROOM in the house was overwhelming. After about 3 hours of trying to get the smell out of the house (to no avail) I starting getting nauseous. At the same time of the nausea, my heart felt like it was pounding out of my chest, my muscles began to twitch and I had a very bad headache. Since it was about 1:00 AM, I decided to try to go to bed and sleep it off. Well after about an hour of rolling around I finally dozed off but only in 10 minute intervals over a period of 2 hours. This was because I kept waking myself up trying to catch my breath. It was like I was having a panic attack in my sleep...VERY WEIRD. Not being able to sleep, I got up for about 4 hours until the wife came home. I was still twitching and shaking and we thought about going to the hospital but I hate spending the money, I'd rather die. My wife IS a registered nurse but she works in labor & delivery. She jokes and tells me "if you don't have a cervix, I can't help you".LOL! Not funny at the time though. Anyway, after being in this stank for almost 12 hours now, I took some Benadryl and got a little sleep.

After about 6 hours of tossing, turning, sweating, nausea, headache (still), twitching, stifled breathing and heart pounding, I woke up. Honestly folks, I thought I was going out of my mind. I felt like I had drunk a case of Red Bull, NO JOKE! My wife was very concerned for me but I didn't want to go to the hospital. I instead got on the internet and found that skunk spray is highly toxic and can be deadly to pets if sprayed and in some cases humans. Some websites I seen called it Skunk Toxic Shock Syndrome (STSS). So after seeing this we decided to wait it out and see if my body was just going through some sort of DETOX or something.

Well here's the latest update. The smell left the house about 2 days ago. So the STANK stayed 5 days. We still catch a drifting smell every once in a while. The outside of the house (down the side), in spots, still smells like skunk spray 7 days later. Folks it has rained here for the last 7 days (6 inches) and this STANK has not been washed away. The rain actually brings out the smell believe it or not. Even though I did not get sprayed, I think when I opened the back door I must have breathed in some of the cloud. On the 3rd day I started smelling like skunk around my fingernails and that lasted into day 5. I had diarrhea for days 2-3. My bowels were gurgling for those days and the nausea stayed through day 5. I never did puke but I wish I would have at times. On day 4 my mind started calming down. I wasn't having the racing thoughts, but I was still twitching and shaking. Today is Thurday and I'm 6 and a half days into this thing and I'm still having a slight tightness in my chest. It's not bad but sometimes it feels like I forgot to take a breath and I'll have to make myself do it. But what is getting me is that I still have a slight twitch all over my body. Sometimes the twitch is in an arm, or a leg, a finger or other various places. I can't tell if it's a nerve thing or a muscle thing. It also is not bad, just annoying. Like someone comes up a gooses ya or something, except it's on body parts other than the rear. I'm leaning towards a nerve thing because of the chemicals that make up the skunk spray. Anyway, things are looking up now, praise God, but it was an experience and I don't ever want to go through it again.

So my question is...has anybody ever been through something like this or heard of anything like this? My advice...if you smell a skunk, DON'T OPEN THE DOOR STUPID and turn of the air IMMEDIATELY!

OH! A final thought. Various door knobs in the house as well as some other metal surfaces, smelled of skunk. We used ammonia to clean them and it seemed to neutralize the odor. Any suggestions as to this phenomenon?

All right! I think that does it. I'm glad to be back! Later, God bless!

[Barkingowl]

I've always thought that skunk smelled like pot & vice versa.

[Brother_Greg]

Originally Posted by Barkingowl

I've always thought that skunk smelled like pot & vice versa.

I've been around pot when I was a teen and it never smelled like skunk to me. I know there is "skunk weed", but I never have smelled that. This smell was like a burned rubber/chemical smell. The further away you were from the cloud, it smelled like a normal skunk spray. The closer you were to the spray itself it smelled like new car tires, only in a higher octive. I first that a meth lab had went bad but I knew it was a skunk. The smell would actually burn your sinuses or at least it did mine. The skunk spray has sulfer in it (organosulfide). So if your allergic to sulfer, I imagine it could give you problems. After some research I found that gas and diesel have sulfer in them and when I get beside a diesel vehicle it burns my eyes, they water and I have a hard time breathing. I've never been tested for sulfer allergies but maybe I need to be.

[Moose Whisperer]

Originally Posted by Barkingowl

I've always thought that skunk smelled like pot & vice versa.

You must be getting the bad stuff.

Not that I would know anything about such things of course!

[Nephler]

There seems to be a big difference in the smell between being sprayed fresh and smelling an older spray or from a distance. Our dogs would get into skunks once in a while and I can say that the fresh smell is really bad. But, when driving by either a dead skunk or an old spray, the smell, I think anyway, really isn't too bad at all.

[Brother_Greg]

Originally Posted by Nephler

There seems to be a big difference in the smell between being sprayed fresh and smelling an older spray or from a distance. Our dogs would get into skunks once in a while and I can say that the fresh smell is really bad. But, when driving by either a dead skunk or an old spray, the smell, I think anyway, really isn't too bad at all.

Nephler, you hit the nail on the head my friend. The fresh smell will KNOCK YOU OUT! I can handle driving by an old kill but this was TOOOOOOOOOOXIC MELTDOWN!

[Kracer]

I have a rating system for skunk scent while driving.
level 1 - faint skunk odor, smells like coffee beans or skunky beer, wish they'd bottle it
level 2 - has all the characteristics of skunk smell, no mistaking it, still rather pleasant
level 3 - strong odor definitely different from level 2
level 4 - odor becomes more acrid and the distance/ location of the dead skunk is easily determined. The dogs will be sniffing the truck when I get home.
level 5 - means you inadvertently ran over the dead skunk's body. A crisp acrid odor that makes you wince. The dogs know something good is coming down the road long before you get there.....even if the wind is not at your back.

Should you ever skin a skunk you will realize two things. One is that the smell is not really a smell, it is a penetrant that bypasses your olfactory lobes leaving them overwhelmed and paralyzed. Two, it 'smells' nothing like the most horribly run over skunk you will ever come across driving down the road. It transcends the concept of a smell. It forms a new entity of perception which can easily be 'sensed' but does not rely on any particular one of your 5 senses. It uses a here-to-for undiscovered 7th sense. A person who has had the olfactory lobes of their brain damaged or removed can still 'smell' a skunk when they skin it.

Odd that on certain days a memo must go out to all the opossums and skunks because their run over bodies suddenly show up in the morning scattered along the roadway. I know they sometimes hole up in the cold weather and when it breaks they all head out for a bite, but sometimes the weather changes don't seem to be related to the sudden carnage. Hmmm?

[arctichomesteader]

Buy a bottle of Gusto lure for a smell you'll never forget.

[Marty Van Diest]

Originally Posted by arctichomesteader

Buy a bottle of Gusto lure for a smell you'll never forget.

I think "Marten Magnet" might even be better...or worse depending on your point of view.

No skunks in Alaska. No 4 legged ones anyway.

[arctichomesteader]

Originally Posted by Marty Van Diest

I think "Marten Magnet" might even be better...or worse depending on your point of view.

No skunks in Alaska. No 4 legged ones anyway.

Hmm, I'll have to give it a try. Not many marten in VT anymore, no trapping for them. The gusto brings the fishers right in though. The UPS guy hates me when I buy lures...