Chapter 15: Smells Like Team Spirit

The soccer girls were much better at plotting revenge than Drew, and deftly avoided causing fatal injuries as well. It turns out, for reasons I will never understand, County Animal Control maintained an isolation pen in a remote area. Inside the pen, skunks trapped in town would be kept and fed for up to a month. And then, the whole pen would be hauled into the mountains for releases, a task done by a county employee wearing a special odor-proof suit.

One of the soccer team members had an indirect connection to that county employee, who showed her the pen, the snare stick, and the special suit. Team members traded around a pickup truck for transport, and they gifted, in turns, the Berco and Neeson homes and autos with spare skunks. Complaining to the police, they said they were receiving retaliation for their alleged attack on Lara. But police quickly determined that Scotts, Tysons, and Pereiras were entirely skunk scent free, and dismissed their complaints.

How could skunks be delivered without odorizing the deliverer?

Defeated, the Berco and Neeson clans packed up and left for Arizona, where they hoped the climate was too dry to support skunks. (Their smelly former homes did not sell and were eventually seized for tax delinquency.)