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<!-- END BYLINE --> Every time Carol Infalt's phone rings, she's not sure if it's going to be condolences for her deceased skunk or a joke about her husband's formerly private parts.
She's been getting a lot of both since Ozzie the pet skunk paid the ultimate price for biting Dan Infalt's penis.
I think it's a Freudian typo, but in an e-mail to my newspaper Carol said, "This is when the hole disaster starts."
While the embarrassing news crackled over the emergency scanner, Dan was rushed to Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital last week.
At that same moment, Department of Natural Resources warden David Walz was heading for the Infalts' Jefferson County home to take Ozzie into custody. The animal quickly was euthanized so it could be tested for rabies, which has stirred up the skunk-loving community.
Meanwhile, Carol received a call at work from the hospital and was told it concerned her husband. She assumed "car accident."
"They told me where he got bit. I had to come and pick him up," she said.
She's not trying to add insult to unspeakable injury, but she blames her husband and not Ozzie for this one.
Rough-housing with an animal equipped with fangs is a bad idea. She'd warned Dan and their three kids about that countless times since they bought Ozzie as a baby for $100 last year from a game farm in Iowa.
"He was playing rough with him on his lap, and Ozzie bit down on my husband's penis," right through his sweat pants, she said.
Several stitches later, Dan's is fine except for the realization that he'll forever be known as the guy with a skunk on his junk.
"He always wanted to be famous. Maybe now he will be. He was hoping to do it more through hunting," Carol said.
Ozzie was just like a dismember of the family. The de-scented, chocolate-brown skunk slept under Carol and Dan's bed, and his favorite meal was a hard-boiled egg smothered in cheese. Carol had hoped he would live out his life of 10 or 15 years and then she would have him stuffed and mounted at home.
It was quite a scene at their 7-acre homestead in a rural area near Rome when warden Walz showed up along with deputies and a humane officer. Carol's macaw and ****atoo were screaming, and the family's pot-bellied pig was raising a ruckus. Walz found Ozzie hiding under a bed.
Walz contacted a veterinarian, and the Wisconsin laboratory that does rabies testing and was told the law says quarantine is not an option for a wild animal, even a pet one.
A specimen needed to be submitted for testing immediately. Unfortunately for Ozzie, that specimen was his brain rather than saliva or a little blood.
First of all, this was not a wild or vicious animal, but a pet bred in captivity and neutered, Carol argues. She kept reminding me that the breeder has been "rabies-free since 1932."
"I'm 100 percent sure my skunk did not have rabies," she said.
She's right. The tests results, released Friday, were negative.
Skunk owners from around the country have rallied around the Infalts and peppered Walz - and now me - with e-mail.
"He should not have been put down. They did not even give Carol a chance to say goodbye," wrote a woman from South Carolina.
The good news, if there is any, is that at least Carol didn't have to pay to have her beloved skunk killed and tested. The state and county picked up those expenses.
Carol said she's not itching to sue anybody. She just wants it known that even though bad things sometimes happen to good husbands, pet skunks aren't so bad.
JSOline
She's been getting a lot of both since Ozzie the pet skunk paid the ultimate price for biting Dan Infalt's penis.
I think it's a Freudian typo, but in an e-mail to my newspaper Carol said, "This is when the hole disaster starts."
While the embarrassing news crackled over the emergency scanner, Dan was rushed to Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital last week.
At that same moment, Department of Natural Resources warden David Walz was heading for the Infalts' Jefferson County home to take Ozzie into custody. The animal quickly was euthanized so it could be tested for rabies, which has stirred up the skunk-loving community.
Meanwhile, Carol received a call at work from the hospital and was told it concerned her husband. She assumed "car accident."
"They told me where he got bit. I had to come and pick him up," she said.
She's not trying to add insult to unspeakable injury, but she blames her husband and not Ozzie for this one.
Rough-housing with an animal equipped with fangs is a bad idea. She'd warned Dan and their three kids about that countless times since they bought Ozzie as a baby for $100 last year from a game farm in Iowa.
"He was playing rough with him on his lap, and Ozzie bit down on my husband's penis," right through his sweat pants, she said.
Several stitches later, Dan's is fine except for the realization that he'll forever be known as the guy with a skunk on his junk.
"He always wanted to be famous. Maybe now he will be. He was hoping to do it more through hunting," Carol said.
Ozzie was just like a dismember of the family. The de-scented, chocolate-brown skunk slept under Carol and Dan's bed, and his favorite meal was a hard-boiled egg smothered in cheese. Carol had hoped he would live out his life of 10 or 15 years and then she would have him stuffed and mounted at home.
It was quite a scene at their 7-acre homestead in a rural area near Rome when warden Walz showed up along with deputies and a humane officer. Carol's macaw and ****atoo were screaming, and the family's pot-bellied pig was raising a ruckus. Walz found Ozzie hiding under a bed.
Walz contacted a veterinarian, and the Wisconsin laboratory that does rabies testing and was told the law says quarantine is not an option for a wild animal, even a pet one.
A specimen needed to be submitted for testing immediately. Unfortunately for Ozzie, that specimen was his brain rather than saliva or a little blood.
First of all, this was not a wild or vicious animal, but a pet bred in captivity and neutered, Carol argues. She kept reminding me that the breeder has been "rabies-free since 1932."
"I'm 100 percent sure my skunk did not have rabies," she said.
She's right. The tests results, released Friday, were negative.
Skunk owners from around the country have rallied around the Infalts and peppered Walz - and now me - with e-mail.
"He should not have been put down. They did not even give Carol a chance to say goodbye," wrote a woman from South Carolina.
The good news, if there is any, is that at least Carol didn't have to pay to have her beloved skunk killed and tested. The state and county picked up those expenses.
Carol said she's not itching to sue anybody. She just wants it known that even though bad things sometimes happen to good husbands, pet skunks aren't so bad.
JSOline
