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Family Guts Home Ruined By Skunk Spray, After It Entered Via Doggie Door

By Roz Zurko
Published on: 12:36 PST, Jun 15, 2017

If you have ever been near a skunk when it has let off that awful scent in a form of a spray, then you can empathize with Scott and Amber Gray, along with their kids. The Latrobe, Pennsylvania, residents shared their skunk-spraying plight with reporters, saying that this was worse than if their home had been ruined by a fire.

If the Gray home had been ravaged by fire, at least insurance would have covered it. But when a skunk wobbled into the house through a doggy door while they were out and then spent three hours spraying its potent scent all over their humble abode, well — it’s not covered by insurance.

A skunk sprays to ward off danger it perceives nearby, so after spending hours inside a home with the family’s dogs, you can imagine that skunk had a lot of spraying going on. It must have seemed like danger around every corner for the smelly, but rather cute creature.

The family had been at a party with their kids at the time and they were gone for about three hours. When they arrived home, there was the skunk running through their home. Scott Gray was recuperating from surgery, but he hobbled around the house with a comforter in his hand trying to catch the skunk.

It took about an hour and a half to catch the skunk and get it out of the house. By this time, the home reportedly reeked like someone combined the worst smells ever and spread it through their house. Gray likened the smell of the house to being steeped in sewage mixed with the scent of rotten onions. If you add to that the smell of burning rubber, you’ve almost got it. After you top it all off with skunk spray, that is what their home smelled like, according to the Daily Mail.

The stench was so strong that Gray said his eyes started burning as soon as he opened the door when the family returned home. The skunk never broke a thing or caused any physical damage to the home, it was the smell that permeated everything in the house, a smell they just couldn’t get rid of. The home was “completely unlivable,” cites Gray.

The noxious scent was everywhere in the house, reports WFMZ local news. At first, the family threw away all the kid’s toys, their home’s furniture, and even the household appliances, thinking that would help the smell dissipate. Even when they turned the TV on, the residue of the skunk’s oily spray heated up and it would attack their noses and eyes once again.

That didn’t work, so the next step was to strip the house down to its wood framing to get the odor out of the dwelling. Not only has the family now spent seven months rebuilding their lives, but they’ve spent over $30,000 so far to rebuild their home, reports the Philly Voice. While the odor-ridding construction went on, the family moved into a small apartment in the same neighborhood, right down the street.

According to the Daily Mail, the renovations are going to cost the family about $70,000 when Gray is done, and that is the cost of doing the work by himself. They had to buy clothes for the kids to go to school and clothes for themselves, as nothing in the house was usable. It was all ruined. They are not done with the house yet, but they set up a GoFundMe Page for donations and they are hosting a fund-raising dinner where they hope people will donate Home Depot and Lowes gift cards for their cause.

[Featured Image by David F. Smith/AP Images]

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