Dan likes to crack jokes. After you laugh about the skunk, you wonder why after the 911 operator and Deputy Bechtold told him it was a kidnapping, why he would think it's just a skunk still.
Q. Here is a good question for Dan if it hasn’t come up before. It really has to do with his mindset on supposedly telling the officer that he would go back and search his outbuildings. If it were me and it was dark outside and a person just abducted a child near my property with a gun I would be thinking there is a strong possibility they could actually be in one of those outbuildings and wouldn’t even consider searching them by myself even if I was armed. I think the entire situation would’ve been very scary and unnerving and the average person wouldn’t be able to go back to bed.
Dan’s response:
A. After making my 911 call and hearing a child was kidnapped, my reaction was immediately to leave the house and walk up the hill to see if I could do anything. I remember having no sense of any danger whatsoever. I am sure I didn’t even lock the house door behind me. Of course, at that time, I had no idea a gun was involved or what really happened. I grabbed the flashlight and walked through a grassy area leading to the road that goes up the hill. When I got to Deputy Sheriff Bruce Bechtold, I remember it was just a short exchange that a boy was taken up the road.
I didn’t even know the kidnapping took place so near (or on) our farm driveway… So, searching the farm buildings in the dark was just not connected to any kind of a fear except for maybe running into a skunk.
http://www.joybaker.com/2013/04/16/a-meaningful-encounter/