Retired Whiffy founder still pines for smell of skunks

This is the time of year when people weary of winter are desperate to discover a hint of spring in the air.

The words "pitchers and catchers report" do it for baseball fans. Old-timers still look for robins. Gardeners ponder the perfect day to plant peas. And Marilyn Atristain holds her nose in the air and literally sniffs for the first whiff of spring.

February and March are mating season for skunks, according to the Humane Society of the United States. Female skunks emit the pungent odor as a way of discouraging unwanted, pesky Pepe Le Pew-esque suitors.

"When I was a kid, it seems like there was a lot of the smell around," opines Atristain, 71. "Now, it's hard to find."

Most suburbanites might cheer that news.

"When one of those suckers lets one rip, and it gets into your house and stinks the place up, you're in for one heck of a ride doing all the things you have to do to get rid of that smell," says Bob Sheridan of Westmont, who knows. "It was 65 bucks to have a professional come out and do an inspection to find the skunk had moved on. Now there will be another $300 cost to dig out and secure the area so there will be no return visits. Also, there are the costs of having everything cleaned and washed."

While Sheridan's costly brush with a skunk might be more common, Atristain once invested money and her heart in skunks. In the spring of 1989, she put an ad in USA Today that read: "Calling all Skunk Lovers. My family and friends think I am the only person in the world that likes the skunk scent. I would like to prove them wrong."

She did, receiving hundreds of handwritten letters (this was before e-mail) from devoted fans of eau de Mephitis Mephitis, a species so ripe they named it twice.

From her second-story bedroom in Schaumburg, she launched Whiffy Inc., which sold small bottles of diluted skunk perfume, stuffed animals, T-shirts, hats and other skunk paraphernalia.

"I worked with a chemist for about a week trying to come up with the smell, but nothing was good enough for me," says Atristain, who ended up buying the real skunk juice from a farmer in rural New York.

"Once I asked him to send it to me undiluted and it was so strong, I had to bury it in Busse Woods," she recalls.

She appeared in dozens of newspapers, went on several TV shows and talked to more than a hundred radio stations. Her business lasted about 10 years.

"I just stopped doing it," says Atristain, who left the skunk biz for a more traditional job with a loan business. "I never made enough to live on, but I sold to hundreds, maybe thousands of people. It was so much fun when I was doing it. I hated to give it up."

Since we last chatted, she got divorced (skunks were not a factor, she says), married a new love, and the couple now lives in a retirement community in Manteno. "I still have a bottle of the scent around," Atristain admits. "I've got it in my bedroom, all sealed up."

Her new husband tolerates her obsession.

"He couldn't care less," says Atristain, who notes she had given up her business before they got married.

In their new home in the retirement community, lots of neighbors share their hobbies.

"I have and they just look at me strangely," Atristain says. Even if they don't share in her passion, she has found the sweet smell of success in their pastimes.

"I spent the afternoon playing Bunco, and I won $16," Atristain says. "But I do wish I could get the smell of skunk out here."