Gang Problem in McCook

OK, I think there's a band of skunks being hooligans in town. They were reported first by a family friend on the "other side" of town (aka 3 blocks away). Then someone said that one was found on the lawn of a house a block away. And now, tonight, I'm innocently sitting online, Mike's at trivia, kids are asleep, Millie's outside...suddenly there's a rank smell in my nose, kind of like burning rubber or plastic.

Panic mode sets in. I comb the house looking for any sort of fire, electrical issue, frayed cord, anything that could cause the smell. I go outside. WAY worse out there. I look on Joliet Road. Did a truck lose a flaming tire? Nope. Snuffy's parking lot? Nope.

I go inside and google "Skunk AND 'burning rubber'" and learn that that is what they really smell like, kind of. Not the kind of appealing (in a gas at the pump way) smell of roadkill skunks.

I go back out to reassess....My back door? Yard? Yep. The dog????? Eeehhhhh, can't tell. She isn't rubbing her eyes. Didn't yelp. Not oily. Doesn't smell really strong, just like she is outside in the stinky foul air.

Two flashlights in hand, I go trolling the driveway, terrified of getting skunked or Millie getting skunked (If she did, I think I would dig the microchip out of her body and just let her go stink for someone else). Then I get kind of used to it and wonder if it was a tire burning nearby? I text Mike at trivia (Poor guy) and let him know what I suspect.

So nwo I'm waiting for him to get home. Back inside (obviously) and the smell is kind of back in the house. I'm now having awful fears that the skunk has made its way into the coal room and stunk up the joint in there. You'll recall that that is where a rat crawled in to die last summer when I was hugely pregnant and it just rotted in there, stinking up the whole house until Mike got home.

He's here! BOY JOB!

UPDATE: So Mike came home, did a perimeter check, and was really hoping there would be a burning tire somewhere. But there wasn't. His next instinct and statement was AWESOME:
Maw, Get my gun!
Like a far more attractive Elmer Fudd, he went skulking with his shotgun into the basement to investigate if a critter was lurking (and stinking) in the coal cellar. I, being clueless, asked if you can just shoot a gun, should I call the police to let them know we're shooting a gun, but just at a skunk so not to be concerned? (He told me yes on the former, no on the latter.)

Well, nothing in there. He checked the side of the house and walked towards my late great aunt's house next door and said it was REALLY strong over there, so perhaps a skunk tangled with a cat or rat or something and it ran over there or something, he'll investigate in the light of day.

I am sitting in the house right now with Kleenex wadded up my nostrils, forming a loopy mustache of ridiculousness. Mike is maintaining that he'd take this acrid, burning chemical smell over the sweet smell of death that emanated from our coal cellar last summer when we had the dead rat epidemic of '07.