Skunk bath

After a few minutes of berating herself for doing something so stupid to her car, Lauren heard the garage door open. Looking up, Lauren saw Jessie walk through the door wearing rubber gloves and a different set of clothes. Lauren saw that they looked familiar, but she still couldn’t make them out due to her blurred vision.

“Okay, Lauren,” Jessie said as she reattached the leash to Lauren’s collar, “let’s get you cleaned up.”

Lauren followed behind Jessie as the older woman led her out of the garage and to the backyard. Suddenly, Lauren froze as she heard a car drive by and honk. Lauren looked towards the street and turned bright red; did they see her? Jessie merely laughed as she opened the gate and led the mortified little woman into the backyard. There waiting for her was a kiddie pool and a large cardboard box.

Lauren sighed as she saw where this was going. She slowly walked forward and stepped into the kiddie pool, then looked up towards Jessie; who was in the process of removing Lauren’s leash and collar.

“Now, I told Ashley that the puppy I was pet sitting for a couple of weeks got tagged by the pest.” Jessie said, removing the collar and tossing it into a trash can. “She said that the best way to remove the skunk smell was a mixture of baking soda, dish soap, and hydrogen peroxide.”

Lauren narrowed her eyes. Why am I sensing a “But…”? She thought angrily.

“However,” Jessie continued, “I don’t have any of that stuff on hand at the moment. And I am not letting you stink up the garage worse than what you’ve done already. So, you’re getting a more traditional bath.”

Jessie reached into the box and pulled out a jug of tomato juice. Lauren whimpered as she saw Jessie open the jug and approach her. Lauren closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable. No sooner had she closed her eyes than she felt her body being covered in the cold, slimy, red liquid. Lauren shivered in disgust as it made contact with her skin. EW! EW! EW! EW! EW! EW! EWWW! Lauren thought in disgust.

Soon she felt Jessie pour another jug over her head. Then another. Then another. Then another. After the fifth jug, Jessie pulled a scrub brush out of the box and began to scrub Lauren down. No part of Lauren’s body was spared from this. Her face, her feet, her butt, her chest, her hair; Lauren’s body was scrubbed completely raw! It felt more like Jessie was trying to wash off her skin!

After almost an hour of scrubbing (plus ten more jugs of tomato juice, six bottles of V8, three jars of tomato sauce, four bottles of ketchup, nine cans of tomato soup, and eight cans of tomato paste), Jessie decided that the smell was gone.

“Okay,” Jessie began, “time to rinse off that gunk; but first…”

Jessie pulled a water bottle out of the box and poured some onto a rag. She brought the rag up to Lauren’s face and began to wipe at her eyes. After she had done this, Lauren blinked a few times and found that her vision was back to normal. Lauren looked up at Jessie…and gasped in horror.

The clothes Jessie was wearing – that by now were coated in tomato products and maybe just a bit of skunk musk – were, in fact, her clothes! Lauren growled in anger, only to yelp when Jessie delivered a quick slap to her butt.

“Bad dog! None of that!” Jessie ordered. “Now let’s get that gunk washed off of you.”