Wrong

Having returned home last night from a long day out, I sat on the downstairs love seat and relaxed into a phone conversation with an old friend. It was raining, and I believe there was some thunder in the distance. It was a lovely welcome cooling rain, the first break from this horrific heat wave that has swept the better part of the nation, and the ambience was pleasant. After a while a sharp acrid smell suddenly invaded my airflow, and suffice it to say, my mellow was thoroughly harshed. My first thought was electrical fire. I got off the phone and walked around the inner and outer perimeters of my new house, sniffing everything for the source of the smell and looking for smoke. I phoned my awesome electrician/ neighbor/ friend who talked me through what to check. After about a half hour I verified that all the appliances and outlets were still intact and nothing seemed to be the obvious source of the burnt smell. The smell was so terrible and strong; it made my throat feel like it was being damaged by breathing in. I turned the fan on high to get some fresh air flow in, but sometimes it seemed the smell was coming from outside. After about 45 mintes of house investigations, I realized that Hopey, my trusty hound friend, had been frantically pacing around the deck, scratching the door to come in. I figured she must be scared by the storm, so I met her at the door with a towel to dry her drenched muddy self off.
Yeah.
I didn't have to rub that towel over her for too long to realize that she was the smell.
Yeah.
It was bad. It was strong.
Except the thing was I didn't realize what it was at first. It just smelled so intensely burnt, like a toxic chemical, that my first thought was that somehow she had been covered with some kind of terrible auto fluids or something- like bad transmission fluid- or even that she had been struck by lightening and fried a little bit or been burnt under the car. She was acting crazy- pacing this-a-way and that-a-way in the house, rubbing her eyes and face on the rug and acting hurt.
A quick "dog smells like burning rubber" google search and a phone call to neighbor RM cleared up the mystery for me. Skunk sprayed in the face and eyes. Poor honey.
It surprises me that I had never smelled the freshy fresh spray of skunk before. It smells nothing like a dead skunk in the road or a skunk scratch and sniff sticker. Only one word kept coming to mind last night when I was investigating the source of the acrid invasion- Wrong. This is just wrong. Something is wrong.
I was wrong.
It was just a skunk.