That gets my vote for SDMB sentence of the week (and I know what I’m putting on my holiday cards this year).
Slight hijack here folks, excuse me.
We don’t have skunks in the UK so can anyone describe the smell these rascals squirt out
skunk smell?
Bad. Just Bad. That’s probably all you really need to know.
Well, make it Bad and Penetratingly Bad and Impossible to Wash Away Lingeringly Bad, and you’ve got the general idea.
Kind of the smell equivalent of that affair that was not only ugly and painful at the time but makes you ashamed of yourself too and she lives on the same block as you and knows all your friends so you can’t just put it behind you (alternate analogies for career, family or bad movie situations available upon request).
You want details? Based on rotten eggs, but more complex and organic smelling: acrid, a little musky (and not in a perfume good way). Oh, and an aggressive finish with amusing undertones of oak and … oh, wait ignore that last part.
The closest thing to it is probably so-called ‘skunky bud’ marijuana (not that, ahem, I’ve ever personally experienced it, of course), except the bud tends towards Good or at worst neutral rather than Bad, if you can understand that.
Did I mention it is Not Good?
Way out here in the West we reserve buggies for babies and carts follow horses. However, baskets may have handles and be carried or have wheels and be pushed.
“Nasty, brutish and short.” I believe it’s a quote from a Terry Pratchett book, the complete sentence being something like, “Gnomes were like their lives: nasty, brutish and short.” He probably stole it from someone else.
Skunk; I’ve never had the complete experience, but to me, the smell is reminiscent of the scent of a rubber eraser magnified a thousand times and added to the taste of sardine-flavored jellybeans.
I’m afraid the worst game I’ve ever played with shopping carts is seeing how fast you can roll them down tiny little bumpy suburban roads while full of canned goods without the jar of applesauce breaking. On the other hand, some of my friends actually managed to arrange things so that it was completely legal. That’s impressive. And they weren’t even our canned goods.
It must be a Texas thing, Wang-Ka. Growing up just outside of Ft. Worth, my friends and I in HS came up with all sorts of insane things to try whilst drunker than skunks. My favorite? ‘Urban Surfing’. We’d go out in the country (so as not to be spotted by nosy cops and/or equally nosy and annoying neighbors) and all but the designated driver would get roaring drunk. Then the we’d climb up on top of the car and attempt to ‘surf’ while the car was going upwards of 30 mph.
What possessed us to do that, I still don’t know. I only did it if the driver was driving one of those old station wagons with the rack on top so I’d have something to plant my feet under when I attempted to stand up.
CJ
I hope that I’m being whooshed here, but “nasty, brutish and short” comes from Thomas Hobbes. He was a monarchist who believed that in the absence of proper authority, people’s lives will be nasty, brutish and short.
Or something along those lines.[/hijack]
Oh, and doing stupid things with cars is by no means restricted to Texas teens.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), British philosopher. Leviathan, part 1, ch. 13 (1651).
Describing life and society without good and stong leaders (e.g., kings).
I remember some experiments from my younger days.
Once rolling, the handbrake of a boxcar cannot stop it on a grade over 5%. It will also attain a speed that is incompatible with the curve in the track just before the Bear Gulch trestle over US 66.
:eek: 
Skunkfume?
Let’s say a grubworm eats some poison and dies. A mouse comes along and sees the easy meal and eat the grubworm, mortally wounding his own self. He falls into a stinky pond where he’s shortly eaten by a big, nasty carp. The carp starts feeling bad, thus allowing an otter to make a meal of him too. Now the otter crawls up on the sandy bank and dies a slow, agonizing death.
Cut to two days later in the hot afternoon. Walk over to that dead otter, pull his hind legs apart and take a big whiff of an otter’s anus that has a dead carp coming out that died from eating a sick mouse that ate a poisoned grubworm. That funk smells like skunk.
Personally, having been juiced by a skunk while hunting before, had I seen a skunk get whacked by a 50 pound bag of cowshit probably would have left me in stitches.
Good story Wang-Ka.
Only you could turn a story about teenage stupidity into something involving otter anuses, lieu. 
CJ
I’ve never raced shopping carts, but we had one as a dorm mascot. It took a lot of abuse, including getting thrown down the stairs, when the testosterone was raging during exams, etc…
I had a high school job at Kroger (a large grocery store chain for our overseas pals here), so I still call them by their Kroger name, “Bascart”. This was almost 30 years ago, but I think they’re still referred to as bascarts to this day.
Hmm. I remember when my dog got skunked.
The odor has always reminded me of a mix of melted plastic and dead fish. So yeah, y’all are right on. 
My 13 year old has already tied shut the handle of the self propelled lawnmower and hung on while riding a skateboard.
I don’t even want to THINK about what I’m in for later.
I’ve heard this story from you before 
and I still read it again.
I think Loopy needed some anger management.
The skunk did not get whacked by the bag of fertilizer.
I mentioned what happens to a bag of fertilizer when it hits asphalt at high speeds, though. It all but vaporizes, blasting rich loamy soil in all directions from the point of impact.
The skunk was close enough to the point of impact that he got pretty well blasted. This, along with the truck, the screech of brakes, and everything else, startled the skunk badly enough that he hosed everything in all directions from HIS point of impact, before running like hell for the treeline.
As to what a skunk smells like… well… I can’t describe it to anyone who’s never smelt it. It stinks. Badly. And it doesn’t come off. TIME is the only cure for the stuff, really, although a bath in tomato juice will cut the stench, and there’s some kind of gunk veterinarians sell that supposedly does it, although I have no personal experience with the stuff.
As one who has had to bathe in tomato juice at least once, and burn a perfectly good set of clothes, I wish I had known about the veterinarian stuff when the incidents in question happened. I’d have paid any amount simply for the CHANCE that the stuff would work…
Hey, to another skunk, it’s heavenly perfume, so inhale deeply.
…the smell of skunk, or the smell of fertilizer?
Three trucks hit each and overturn at the beginning of July. One is carrying rotten eggs, the second dead animals (including some fish) and the third cheap rancid perfume. All their cargos fall out and intermingle.
July and August have 95 degree and 95% humidity and no wind.
On September 1 you are kidnapped. Your eyes and mouth are taped, and your hands and feet are bound. You are delivered to the spot of the accident and left there.
THAT is the smell of skunk.