What would Brian Marshall do?
8 months pregnant. (yes)
Thursday at the cabin. (yes)
Beautiful weather. (yes)
Good company. (yes)
Supposed to be relaxing. (not a chance)
At 11:30 pm came 'the incident'.
I went outside for my last pee break before bed. Pregnancy is a killer on the bladder. (These are the times I appreciate indoor plumbing!)
Now, I have grown up in this cabin for my entire youth so I didn’t need a flashlight to make my way there. I knew every patio block, stinging nettle plant, and bump between the cabin and the old outhouse.
As I approached the blue and white run-down building, I heard a strange sound. The sound of 'some animal' swimming around in our outhouse! And it sounded big... my first thought was: I hope that is not someone's favourite puppy!
So I yelled to Quinn to 'Get out here! And bring the flashlight!'
Quinn came running out and lifted up the lid and peered in the hole...
At first he could not see anything except the water stuff swirling around like a toilet.
Then he saw it as it poked its head out of the muck!
A SKUNK!
He threw the lid down and backed out of that outhouse so quickly that he nearly knocked me over!
We decided to call on my family in this time of emergency.
At 11:30 pm... they were no help... NO ONE wanted to come near our outhouse...
What if he sprayed?
What were they supposed to do about it?
How was I to know?
(Above: a picture of a road with a mess of bushes and a blue and white cabin in behind. Just behind that clump of trees was where the outhouse stood)
So we made an arrangement to use someone else's outhouse for the night and try to call the village office in the morning and pray that the skunk didn't get too panicked and decide to mess up the already terrible outhouse smell!
The Morning After:
So we decided to check on our neighbour friend in the outhouse the next morning.
There is no sign of him so we figured he must have drowned (what a way to go!). To be sure we take a walk around the outhouse to find 'tracks' because they won't be too hard to spot!
So my Aunt Linda makes about 9 phone calls to find out what we do about this 'skunk in the outhouse' as nothing like this has ever happened before! After years of 5 brothers having cabins together... not once has there been an outhouse/animal issue!
She spoke to 3 people in the community and about 6 from other places that really had no clue about what was going on.
We find out we are responsible for getting the dead fella out of there... (oh joy... I remind myself this is not MY cabin... therefore not MY responsibility.)
But the first person in the community says, 'Well I don't know what to do... but there is this guy...Brian Marshall.... He shoots crows.....' (Like the 2 things are virtually IDENTICAL shooting crows = getting skunk out of an outhouse.) I thought that was pretty weird and strange...
Then the next person in the community, who is running for mayor, she says,
'Well I don't know what to do... but there is this guy...Brian Marshall.... He shoots crows.....AND he has a license to shoot them!'
I was like 'what the f@#*?!?!' how will this help us! Is he going to SHOOT the dead skunk in the outhouse? I mean really?
We try to get in touch with Brian Marshall. At this point I am baffled about why but I am going with this odd story. I AM INVESTED. He is not home, so we leave a message.
We finally reach the lady at the town office and she says, 'Well, we have not ever had this problem before BUT....there is this guy...Brian Marshall.... He shoots crows.....He is licensed you know!'
My aunt explains that we tried to call him already and the lady says, 'Yeah, he's not at home... he is cutting trees right now.'
People KNOW where Brian Marshall is... AT 9 AM on a Friday morning.
WHAT the hell is with this Brian Marshall?
He is a damn local celebrity and ALL these people are insistent that since he shoots crows... AND has a license... THEREFORE he should be able to help us with a DEAD SKUNK IN THE OUTHOUSE!
So the jokes start rolling in about good old Brian Marshall:
When is the next Brian Marshall Day Parade?
How many crows do you have to shoot in order to get 'known' so well for shooting them?
Does he have "I SHOOT CROWS" on the back of his pick-up?
Should I ask Brian Marshall about whether I should buy a home?
Brian Marshall: Licensed to Kill
TEARS stream down our faces.
My aunt did not understand the Brian Marshall jokes, "After all he is the closest thing we have to pest control."
We do talk to two other people in the community who recommend, you guessed it, a certain famous man in the village.
After I shower, we eventually do find out that we can pour lye down the hole and it will eat up the skunk and then we can just pump it out (a MUCH BETTER plan than fishin' it out of there!)
We never do get to speak to Brian Marshall (a damned shame); he probably was confused about our message on his machine.
After my vacation, I came back to my office job in another province and my boss used to have a cabin at the same lake.
As I AM TELLING HIM ABOUT MY STORY... he interrupts to educate me about Brian Marshall... who shoots crows, has a gun and a license from the village to shoot them. He also has his own gun since he is a retired RCMP officer. AND HOW WE SHOULD HAVE CALLED HIM TO HELP US OUT.
D:
Brian Marshall is so famous, that my boss IN ANOTHER PROVINCE WHO HAS NOT HAD A CABIN THERE IN 3 YEARS recommended him for fishing skunks out of outhouses.
Brian Marshall: the man, the myth, the legend
Thursday at the cabin. (yes)
Beautiful weather. (yes)
Good company. (yes)
Supposed to be relaxing. (not a chance)
At 11:30 pm came 'the incident'.
I went outside for my last pee break before bed. Pregnancy is a killer on the bladder. (These are the times I appreciate indoor plumbing!)
Now, I have grown up in this cabin for my entire youth so I didn’t need a flashlight to make my way there. I knew every patio block, stinging nettle plant, and bump between the cabin and the old outhouse.
As I approached the blue and white run-down building, I heard a strange sound. The sound of 'some animal' swimming around in our outhouse! And it sounded big... my first thought was: I hope that is not someone's favourite puppy!
So I yelled to Quinn to 'Get out here! And bring the flashlight!'
Quinn came running out and lifted up the lid and peered in the hole...
At first he could not see anything except the water stuff swirling around like a toilet.
Then he saw it as it poked its head out of the muck!
A SKUNK!
He threw the lid down and backed out of that outhouse so quickly that he nearly knocked me over!
We decided to call on my family in this time of emergency.
At 11:30 pm... they were no help... NO ONE wanted to come near our outhouse...
What if he sprayed?
What were they supposed to do about it?
How was I to know?
(Above: a picture of a road with a mess of bushes and a blue and white cabin in behind. Just behind that clump of trees was where the outhouse stood)
So we made an arrangement to use someone else's outhouse for the night and try to call the village office in the morning and pray that the skunk didn't get too panicked and decide to mess up the already terrible outhouse smell!
The Morning After:
So we decided to check on our neighbour friend in the outhouse the next morning.
There is no sign of him so we figured he must have drowned (what a way to go!). To be sure we take a walk around the outhouse to find 'tracks' because they won't be too hard to spot!
So my Aunt Linda makes about 9 phone calls to find out what we do about this 'skunk in the outhouse' as nothing like this has ever happened before! After years of 5 brothers having cabins together... not once has there been an outhouse/animal issue!
She spoke to 3 people in the community and about 6 from other places that really had no clue about what was going on.
We find out we are responsible for getting the dead fella out of there... (oh joy... I remind myself this is not MY cabin... therefore not MY responsibility.)
But the first person in the community says, 'Well I don't know what to do... but there is this guy...Brian Marshall.... He shoots crows.....' (Like the 2 things are virtually IDENTICAL shooting crows = getting skunk out of an outhouse.) I thought that was pretty weird and strange...
Then the next person in the community, who is running for mayor, she says,
'Well I don't know what to do... but there is this guy...Brian Marshall.... He shoots crows.....AND he has a license to shoot them!'
I was like 'what the f@#*?!?!' how will this help us! Is he going to SHOOT the dead skunk in the outhouse? I mean really?
We try to get in touch with Brian Marshall. At this point I am baffled about why but I am going with this odd story. I AM INVESTED. He is not home, so we leave a message.
We finally reach the lady at the town office and she says, 'Well, we have not ever had this problem before BUT....there is this guy...Brian Marshall.... He shoots crows.....He is licensed you know!'
My aunt explains that we tried to call him already and the lady says, 'Yeah, he's not at home... he is cutting trees right now.'
People KNOW where Brian Marshall is... AT 9 AM on a Friday morning.
WHAT the hell is with this Brian Marshall?
He is a damn local celebrity and ALL these people are insistent that since he shoots crows... AND has a license... THEREFORE he should be able to help us with a DEAD SKUNK IN THE OUTHOUSE!
So the jokes start rolling in about good old Brian Marshall:
When is the next Brian Marshall Day Parade?
How many crows do you have to shoot in order to get 'known' so well for shooting them?
Does he have "I SHOOT CROWS" on the back of his pick-up?
Should I ask Brian Marshall about whether I should buy a home?
Brian Marshall: Licensed to Kill
TEARS stream down our faces.
My aunt did not understand the Brian Marshall jokes, "After all he is the closest thing we have to pest control."
We do talk to two other people in the community who recommend, you guessed it, a certain famous man in the village.
After I shower, we eventually do find out that we can pour lye down the hole and it will eat up the skunk and then we can just pump it out (a MUCH BETTER plan than fishin' it out of there!)
We never do get to speak to Brian Marshall (a damned shame); he probably was confused about our message on his machine.
After my vacation, I came back to my office job in another province and my boss used to have a cabin at the same lake.
As I AM TELLING HIM ABOUT MY STORY... he interrupts to educate me about Brian Marshall... who shoots crows, has a gun and a license from the village to shoot them. He also has his own gun since he is a retired RCMP officer. AND HOW WE SHOULD HAVE CALLED HIM TO HELP US OUT.
D:
Brian Marshall is so famous, that my boss IN ANOTHER PROVINCE WHO HAS NOT HAD A CABIN THERE IN 3 YEARS recommended him for fishing skunks out of outhouses.
Brian Marshall: the man, the myth, the legend