Free Driving Minnie's Piano by Lesley Choyce Page A

way, more than one person with
a keen nose figured out that I was the source of the skunk smell.
But no one said a word, even the guy across the aisle from me who
wanted to talk. He told me he was a lawyer and I bet lawyers have a
way of figuring things like this out.
    When the plane's door opened
again in Toronto and we walked into the terminal, I watched the
faces of the airport workers we passed. Some frowned, some
squinched up their noses. I think that we all smelled a little bit
like skunk by then and everywhere my fellow passengers went that
day, the smell would be noticed. It's amazing how an early morning
smell of skunk in Nova Scotia would turn up at lunches and business
meetings and sporting events in Toronto, twelve hundred miles away
that same day.

    Back home in Nova Scotia, my
family was having a worse time than me. I felt a certain pride in
my success at flying all the way to Toronto without anyone pointing
me out as the man who smelled like skunk. Fortunately, there is a
piano in the airport in Toronto and I sat down and played
Pachelbel's Canon and a couple of other songs to celebrate my
achievement.
    At that very moment, however,
my daughter Pamela was crying in the principal's office at Ross
Road School. Kids on school busses are never fooled about where
skunk smells come from. Pamela got on the bus and immediately
everyone knew. They made fun of her all the way to school and into
school and she toughed it out until ten o'clock when she couldn't
take it any more.
    She called home and her mother
came to rescue her from the cruel insults of her classmates. For
weeks and months afterwards, unmerciful kids would remind everyone
about the time Pamela came to school smelling like, well, you know
what.
    While Terry was picking up
Pamela, Sunyata arrived home on this cold winter day to see all the
doors and windows to the house were open and clothing strewn all
over the entire lawn. She let out a scream and ran towards the
house, assuming that some insane burglar had invaded her home,
stealing things and leaving piles of unwanted clothes on the lawn.
But as soon as she got inside, she realized it was worse than that.
The house wreaked badly and Terry had distributed clothes outside
to rid them of the smell.
    An expensive machine was
rented to supposedly kill the skunk aroma but it barely made a
dent. The skunk, after all, was living under the house and even if
he wasn't in full defense mode, he continued to let his presence be
known. At night you could hear him scratching around in the dirt
below. And his perfume pervaded everything and everywhere. It would
hang around for a long time. Nearly two months later, I could open
my old leather briefcase in the university classroom where I
taught, and out would pour the olfactory signature of
skunk.

    I returned from Toronto a few
days later to confront a family in rebellion. Because I had escaped
skunk city for a few brief days, I felt the full wrath of two
daughters and a wife who had been coping with the physical and
psychological impact of a house under skunk siege. My wife walked
around with tissue paper stuffed up her nose. Sunyata used a
swimmer's nose plug. Pamela, whose bedroom was farthest from the
skunk problem, kept the door to her room shut tightly and, when
necessary, ran through the rest of the house holding her breath
until she could get outside.
    It seems
that everyone had advice about how to get rid of skunks. Many
advised killing them with poison, but I couldn't bring myself to do
that. The skunks really meant us no harm. My favourite advice by
someone who claimed success in skunk eviction was
this. You wire up a bright
light and a radio to play somewhere near where the skunk den is. It
will scare them away.
    I liked this non-violent
method immensely. It meant that I had to go into the deeper part of
the basement, however, and get as close to the crawl space as
possible. I put on heavy protective clothes and safety glasses,
climbed down the basement