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By Jarrod Erdody
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.
In happier times, Carol Infalt holds her pet skunk, Ozzie. The skunk was euthanized
so it could be tested for rabies after biting her husband. The test was negative.
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 cockatoo 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.
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Comments
I must say if that happened to me I wouldn't be putting it up on my website. hahaha
Sorry to hear about Ozzie though!
Posted by: omegaman66 on October 7, 2005 10:46 PM
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