An old tin sign on the side of our barn.

The temperatures are pushing daily into the upper 80s and low 90s. That there are four shirts hanging on the porch this morning is testament to both hard work and the extent to which I perspired yesterday. At some point during that sweltering day, passing through a gate into one of our fields, I was greeted by sight and smell with the well-rotted remains of a skunk. It was perhaps because at that moment I yearned for cooler weather, this memory came back to me.

It must have been 15 years ago, on a cold day in early January, when I heard a commotion outside. Opening the door, I found our pup Dixie rolling around on the front porch. She offered up a picture of contentment and cuteness, legs in the air, squirming on her back as in a desperate attempt to satisfy an itch. I reached down to pat her belly just as she rolled aside, exposing a particularly large frozen, half-decomposed rat.

Winter can be a tough time for a farm dog, always in search of something dead to help disguise its scent. But Dixie was nothing if not diligent. She unearthed a steady supply of carcasses — many of which she played a part in dispatching before depositing their remains on the sidewalk, the porch, or, if we weren’t careful, the kitchen floor.

One morning I opened the door to find a goose egg on the porch. Innocent enough, one might think. But geese only lay during one season, and this was not that season. Which meant that the egg before me had been curing for nigh on 11 months. Dixie had just discovered and dragged up her own weapon of mass destruction. I responded by doing the only thing I could do. Clad in coveralls, hat held in front of my face as a shield, I stooped and picked up the egg. Moving as gingerly as a bomb disposal tech, I stepped off the porch, tiptoed through the yard, and hid the egg in a clump of bushes behind the well house.

Later that morning, standing in the kitchen, I heard what has become a very familiar “pop” coming from the direction of the porch. As I cracked the front door open, I was overwhelmed by the stench of rotten-egg fumes and immediately gagged. Dixie had discovered the egg’s hiding spot, retrieved her prize, and broken it open, and was lustily licking up its year-old contents … on the door mat.

Always eager to follow the sage advice of Mr. Twain, I drew the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene and shut the door, quickly. But, oh my, how the memory of that smell still lingers.

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