IT was clearly the revenge of the skunk.

Last Sunday, this column proposed a musical entitled Lynn Valley Life, featuring characters based on my family, and, in a guest role, the skunk who's been living under our deck for several months. We haven't seen much of this individual, but we've certainly smelt its rank perfume. In the musical, Stanley and I were scheming to relocate our striped nemesis to our imaginary neighbours' place, if not well beyond it.

Nobody told me that skunks read the North Shore News -- I assumed they'd favour The Outlook. But the other night we were enjoying a blissful evening picnic at Dundarave beach when our son Bart called to say our dog had been targeted by Pepé Le Pew.

This had happened once before. I must say, skunks have impeccable timing. The previous blast of Eau de Get Outta My Face occurred on the hottest weekend in August a few years ago, when I happened to be in charge of catering a wedding for the daughter of some friends.

Stanley had smoked some pork butts in advance for the occasion, and had then gone hiking with Bart in Alberta. I'd stayed behind to prepare the trimmings and serve the dinner with help from our own daughter, Petunia.

The night before the wedding, I was just about to call it quits after hours of sweaty bean-cooking in 100 degree heat when a savage stench hit my nostrils. Dog and skunk had tangled, and everybody knows which animal wins this kind of World Skunk Federation debacle. Molly had been blasted right on the shoulder -- a classic hit, I gather. A dog usually sees in a split second what's coming, turns its head away, and, to paraphrase the song by Ram Jam, "Whoa, black skunky, bam-ba-lam."

Unlike dogs, apparently, humans never forget their first intimate encounter with fresh skunk spray. There's something evilly chemical about it. After some prodigious cursing, I began the washing process, and, over the course of several brutally hot days, I scrubbed the dog at least 15 times, trying almost every remedy. I washed her on the deck, in the creek, in the ocean and in the shower. She still reeked.

When a friend of Petunia's told me there was a de-skunking dog wash on North Vancouver's Main Street, I piled the canine into the car, held my nose and drove there, only to find it temporarily closed. Finally, I went to my favourite pet store and begged for help. A commercial potion eventually did the job. Molly was back to smelling like a grubby dog, which was, by contrast, heavenly.

This time, forewarned by Bart, I drove home from the beach with memories of the last interlude washing through my consciousness. Stanley was half-tanked from our evening's shenanigans, so I bitterly suspected the dog-scrubbing would once again fall to me. When we got to our place, however, 15-year-old Bart was ready and willing to help, and the three of us made the first assault with a jar of tomato juice we happened to have on hand, following up with dog shampoo.

Molly was no less repellent this time than last. The blow had caught her square in the chest, and was so concentrated it had actually left a large, reddish stain on her décolletage. Several hosings-down later, we left her to sleep off her skunk-over outside on the deck while her faithful friend Bart kept watch from the nearby couch, electing to sleep there in case she needed him.

After all, a gigantic black bear had visited our carport the previous two nights. What if "Blarney the Bear," as Stanley kept calling him, dropped by for his customary appetizer plate of half-eaten corn cobs and rib bones and found fragrant canine senior citizen Molly cringing in the dark?

Good God, if I'd ever imagined I was going to be living in a 1960s episode of the Wonderful World of Disney I would never have moved to North Van. Even before the skunk attack, after the bear's delight in our leftovers had made itself apparent, Stanley had begun wandering around the house imitating the folksy drawl of the classic Disney nature story narrator.

"Now, Blarney the Bear had no idea there was a big ol' dog in the yard . . . and an even bigger skunk under that dilapidated porch," Stanley would mutter to himself, chuckling. "And wouldn't you know it, the berries by the porch had gotten ripe juuuusst that week, and that big bear was feelin' mighty hungry. Well, Blarney decided to go a-pickin' right when Skunky had just about the same idea. . . ." And on and on.

(In this sort of situation, I generally try to recall a moment in my life when I did something sophisticated. This week, as Stanley mumbled away about ol' Blarney goin' berry pickin', I conjured up a memory of a visit to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which smelled only of marble and rich people. After my visit, I had a cocktail in a dark bar nearby, and some free nuts. Those were the days.)

Ah, well. I shouldn't have been surprised by the skunking. I don't know about bears, but skunks are in my blood. Long ago we had them living under our garage in Ottawa. My dad called in the professionals, who made a trail of food that led into a trap that was covered with a tarp. The next morning, Dad could hear rustling and scuttling in the trap and couldn't resist a peek under the tarp just before he departed for work. Needless to say, the skunks were two squirts ahead of him. My poor father dropped the tarp and dashed into the house, which my mother did not appreciate. Once inside, he turned on the shower and jumped in, fully dressed in suit, tie, socks and shoes.

After our resident skunk reads this column, I suppose I'll be his next target. But I now have a strategy. As the stream of liquid stink, in slow motion, flies my way, I will close my eyes and remember the first time I went to New York's Museum of Modern Art. Once again, I'll sit in the room lined with Claude Monet's giant, glorious paintings of the water lilies at Giverny. And I'll probably think, "I'll bet Monet never had skunks."

kate@katezimmerman.ca