Don't eat the meatballs! AKA: Stupid stuff you've done.

[Outdoor Girl]

I come by my skunk whispering naturally.  My grandfather used to live in a cottage out in the woods.  One night, he heard a knock on his door, opened it and there was no one there.  Until he looked down and here was a skunk with a can on his head.  So Gramps bent down, gently removed the can, tossed it back out into the yard and shut the door.  An hour later, another knock on the door.  Same skunk, same can.  So Gramps removed the can again and this time was smart enough to keep it inside as he closed the door.  My Dad used to work at an outdoor school and there was a skunk that kept making a mess of one lunch area because the kids weren't the best at cleaning up after themselves.  So Dad trapped the skunk and let it go, like I described.  The kids were amazed.  A couple of days later, they caught another one.  Before my Dad arrived, the kids decided they could let it go themselves.  Yeah, that didn't go so well.

[DynoMite]

PSA: When showering and shaving, don't absentmindedly use your razor to scratch a bug bite on your ankle. Yeeowch!!

[cwm]

Aww, skunks are little sweeties! We had a few when we had land down in Arkansas. They'd have run of the place when we weren't there, and when we were there sitting on the deck watching the campfire, they'd come up from under the deck and warm themselves, too. I learned long ago to leave them alone and stay calm, you should be perfectly fine.

I have so much stupid to add to this thread, but I'll start with my friend, R.

I went to college with R. He invited me back to his family's house for a summer visit. We're all sitting around the bonfire (R, his brother, their parents, and me) and R decides to go inside to get sodas for everyone.

Fifteen minutes later we wonder where he is. The house is only two minutes away, if you're SLOW. So his brother goes after him.

Another fifteen minutes pass. We're trying to figure out where they are, so his parents and I head inside.

R dropped one can of soda. In his haste to pick it up, the others got shaken. Thinking it would be a bad idea to bring out shaken cans of soda, he set them on top of the table. Then turned and got fresh sodas. Turned back, knocked the shaken cans off the table. One of them flew up and hit the ceiling, the rest of them soon followed, covering EVERYTHING in the kitchen with soda.

Their house was an old schoolhouse. As such, the kitchen had been converted from offices and was very tall. And had the laundry in the corner. So all the clean clothes that had been sitting on top of the dryer to be sorted now had to be washed again.

When his brother came in to help, he grabbed for the broom behind the fridge. They were going to put a rag on it to try to clean the ceiling. R's brother promptly knocked off some jars of something off the top of the fridge. I can't remember what.

By the time his parents and I came in, it looked like the two of them had started a food fight and then got worried that they'd get caught. The mirrored guilt on their faces when the door opened was hilarious.

[White Dragon]

A few tips for dealing with skunks in traps:  Grab an old blanket or beach towel and drape it over the trap.  The dark will calm them down (of course, you don't need to do this in the middle of the night).  Talk to them quietly in a calm voice, pitching it lower than you would normally speak, especially for women.  Then, pick up the trap and put it in the back of your car.  No, I don't recommend this; I did it, though.*  When you are ready to let Pepe Le Pew out, wrinkle the towel/blanket back so you can open the trap door.  Back away slowly and let Pepe mosey out on his own time.

My father accidentally caught a skunk in a live trap.
He had been told that a skunk cannot spray if it cannot raise its tail.
Since the trap kept the skunk's tail from raising, Dad thought all was safe.

So Dad decided to put the skunk in the trunk of the car and headed up the mountain to release the critter.

As it happens, skunks can indeed spray with their tails down. And it did so. Repeatedly. In the trunk of the car.

My Dad wasn't able to go out in public for a couple of weeks, and a month later people were *still* moving away from my poor mom at church!

[siamesecat2965]

My father accidentally caught a skunk in a live trap.
He had been told that a skunk cannot spray if it cannot raise its tail.
Since the trap kept the skunk's tail from raising, Dad thought all was safe.

So Dad decided to put the skunk in the trunk of the car and headed up the mountain to release the critter.

As it happens, skunks can indeed spray with their tails down. And it did so. Repeatedly. In the trunk of the car.

My Dad wasn't able to go out in public for a couple of weeks, and a month later people were *still* moving away from my poor mom at church!

OH that's funny. my CWs wanted to know why i was laughing so hard.  Your poor dad.

[Thipu1]

When I was a child, we had a problem with raccoons getting into our trash cans.

Someone told my Dad to put a cheap transistor radio near the cans.  The sounds needn't be loud enough to disturb the neighbors but they would deter the critters. 

It backfired.

Raccoons are a bit more wily than he thought.  They got hold of the radio and dropped it inside a hollow tree.  Until the batteries wore down, we had a haunted tree that played Top 40 music. 

[*inviteseller]

The only problem with relocating skunks is they mate for life so if you take one, you need to find the spouse.  My dad had a couple at his place in the mountains.  They would wake him up every night trying to get into the garbage cans so he started leaving them a plate a bit further down before he went to bed.  Skunks had dinner, dad's cans were not messed with anymore, life was good. 

And back to the D'oh moments I have daily...it is hot..hotter than hot here so my DD wanted me to hose her off (it was honestly too blazingly hot to sit in her pool because of the sun beating on us) so I was hosing her and the dog off.  The dog haaates to be hosed off (and FTR, she is a lab who does not understand her breed are supposed to like water!) and she takes off from me running through my flower garden.  I drop the hose so I can go after her, but when I dropped it down, I was leaning over, dropped it perfectly so the handle of the nozzle hit the ground and shot myself in the face with water..the dog laughed as I blindly groped to grab the hose.  Doggie karma was achieved.

[Outdoor Girl]

I think I've told this story somewhere on board before but it's a good one...  A supervisor at our sister office owns big dogs.  He has a doggie door for them so they can go out to the fenced yard whenever they'd like.  The dogs sleep on the floor of the master bedroom.

One night, supervisor woke to something moving around the room.  He figured it was one of the dogs until he realized it was on the wrong side of the room.  He sat up, flipped on the light and got sprayed by a skunk.  That had walked by/over two large dogs.  He and his wife had to wash everything several times, including the dogs and all the clothes in the closet, the bedding, the carpets, wiped down the walls and ceiling, you name it.  They think Pepe came in through the doggie door.

He went to work the next morning and his staff made him go home as he was stinking up the office.  A few days later, the manager over this supervisor and mine was in our office.  He'd bought a Pepe Le Pew doll and got our AA to send it over to the other supervisor.   

[Eeep!]

When I was a child, we had a problem with raccoons getting into our trash cans.

Someone told my Dad to put a cheap transistor radio near the cans.  The sounds needn't be loud enough to disturb the neighbors but they would deter the critters. 

It backfired.

Raccoons are a bit more wily than he thought.  They got hold of the radio and dropped it inside a hollow tree.  Until the batteries wore down, we had a haunted tree that played Top 40 music.

I really really like this story!

[cwm]

Telling on my mom while I decide which story of mine to tell.

Earlier this year we had a huge snowstorm. The city pretty much shut down. Mom and I were at work at the time. She drove a Chevy Malibu, I had my sports car. She had picked me up at home in the morning to carpool in case we had to leave early, so just her car, I don't even have my keys. This is important. So we go out, brave the snow, and I get in the car and start it up while she brushes the snow off. Then comes time to try to push out. Nope, not going anywhere. At all. Try again, no luck. Okay, we'll give up, go back inside, wait for the maintenance people to come dig us out when they get the chance.

I hand mom her keys, she leans into the back of the car and gets her purse back out. We go back inside.

A bit later, we decide to try again, there's someone who can help us. She goes to get the keys. They aren't there. We upend her entire purse, all her pockets, all my pockets, my whole purse, even though I'm 100% sure I handed them back to her. We don't have any keys. None. They're gone. There are spares at her house for it, but no way to get to her house. Or my apartment, where I have a key to her house. So we go check the car. Doors aren't locked to the car, but we can't go anywhere. Mom is in panic mode, I'm trying not to. Going through lists of people we know who have trucks and can come rescue us.

All the managers are still at work. They come, find my mom freaking out, ask what's wrong. They all proceed outside to look in the snow for her keys. After an hour, there's no luck, the snow's not stopping, and we're striking out on who can help us. One of the managers offers to drive us to my apartment. Sis is there with the kid, she can let us in, we can work out driving her car tomorrow to get everything else taken care of. Okay, great. We lock mom's car and head home.

Fast forward a few days. Mom's surviving on her spare keys and my copy of her house key. We're getting by. My car is still plowed into the lot, so we're carpooling. And Mondays we take the Sproglet after dinner so Sis can go do her thing for one evening. I'm getting the kid out of her carseat back at the apartment and *plop* go the keys into the parking lot. Mom's keys. The ones she had set down in the carseat to grab her purse. The ones that had literally been sitting in the carseat under a strap for nearly a week while she freaked out about them going down into the sewers when the fifteen foot high snow piles melted.

I laughed. I was also sworn to secrecy among co-workers. NONE of them were to know that she'd had the keys in her car the whole time until SHE was ready to tell them.

[siamesecat2965]

When I was a child, we had a problem with raccoons getting into our trash cans.

Someone told my Dad to put a cheap transistor radio near the cans.  The sounds needn't be loud enough to disturb the neighbors but they would deter the critters. 

It backfired.

Raccoons are a bit more wily than he thought.  They got hold of the radio and dropped it inside a hollow tree.  Until the batteries wore down, we had a haunted tree that played Top 40 music.

I really really like this story!

We had this problem as well, until my dad started sprinkling some ammonia over the trash bag. But I can recall one night we had a roast chicken, and my dad threw the carcass out. tied in a plastic garbage bag, with the rest of the kitchen garbage.

We come out the next morning to find the lid off, a neat hole IN the bag, and the chicken bones picked clean, scattered across our back steps. None of the other garbage was disturbed.

[Outdoor Girl]

We have green bins where I live - you can put out all your organic waste, including meat scraps and bones.

Saturday, a neighbour brought me a couple of bass.  I cleaned them and put the filets in the fridge then wrapped the guts and skin up in newspaper and tossed them in the green bin.  Garbage day is today (Wednesday).

It has been around 90°F every day this week.  Yeah, just imagine how that smells.  I put a note on the bin, apologizing for the stench and letting them know I'd be freezing my green bin contents until garbage day the next time.

[Snooks]

I laughed. I was also sworn to secrecy among co-workers. NONE of them were to know that she'd had the keys in her car the whole time until SHE was ready to tell them.

Reminds me of a very respectable middle aged co-worker who had a "not until I'm ready to tell" experience.  She came in one Monday morning limping, we asked what had happened (as you do) she said she'd tripped over a dog toy and wrenched her knee.  Everyone sympathises, life goes on.  A few months later she admitted to a few of us that what had actually happened was she went to a dinner party, had a little bit too much wine, when they got home husband told her to wait in the hall while he got her water and he'd help her to bed.  She decided she could do that on her own, put her hand onto a door in the hallway to steady herself which wasn't properly closed and went flying, she probably should have waited for her husband...

[jilly]

OK it's been a year, it's time I told the story of the most stupid thing I have ever done.

First some background I work in electronic/electrical test our benches are set out in bays and due to the amount of equipment you can't really see from one bay to the next.

Short version I was distracted, forgot to turn off the power and gave myself a 400V electric shock, I'm fine I just have some interesting scars from the burns.

Long version
I had a unit which was not working when hot but fine at room temp on my bench so I'd moved a temp chamber (big oven) next to my bench set everything up to see what was going on. it didn't work at all and I hadn't even started heating it up yet so I pulled everything out and tried it on my bench, yeah it was fine. The only difference was the unit was powering a different bit of test kit in the temp chamber to out. Everything had to be pulled apart and moved again so I could figure out why it would work on one bit of test kit and not another. I was busy so I was trying to think about what the problem was while moving everything and as I picked up 2 wires I realised

1) I should have looked harder for the proper shrouded wires its 400V
2) I should have turned off the power its 400V
3) I cannot let go its 400V and is overriding all the nerves in my arms
4) I cannot speak 400V going in one hand and out the other stops you doing that too
5) I am the only person in this bay
6) Between me and the corridor is a temp chamber that is over 6ft tall
7) I NEED TO MOVE NOW

Well it gets a bit fuzzy here but I must have stepped back a bit and pulled the equipment on the other end of those wires of the bench which yanked the wire out of the equipment and broke the circuit. I let go, 'shouted' for help, turned off the power and lay down as the world was spinning allot!! I had some nasty entry/exit burns that took 3 months to fully heal but only needed 6 weeks of dressing and some small burns as the electricity 'bubbled' round my fingers. I took photos at the first dressing change so I could show all the trainees, hopefully they will learn from my mistake.

One of the trainees found a cartoon of someone putting an AC/DC CD in a stereo and being electrocuted and put it above my bench, someone else added Silly Jilly. A year on and I am still introduced to new hires as someone with a sparky personality, I will never live this down.

[cwm]

Jilly, I'm glad to hear you're okay. My old HS drama tech teacher told of someone who was doing lighting for a local show, some temp guy they hired on. Nobody realized he had electrocuted himself, they just thought he was really slow working. Turns out he touched live wires on the lights. He didn't make it.

On the flip side, if you're okay with it, I'd love to see pictures of the dressing change over on the gross out thread!