Smells

Inspirational song: Dead Skunk (Loudon Wainwright III)

First off, I must clarify. The above is the only song I know of off the top of my head that actually refers to skunks. The skunk in this story is not dead. Otherwise I wouldn't be writing about him/her.

Mr S-P did a Lowe's and salvage yard run today, preparing for a trip up to the cabin to restructure the Murray ramp he built just a few weeks ago. (Ramp is barely wider than Murray's wheelchair, so he is hesitant to use it.) Going one way or the other to the Boulder Resource store, he said some driver in front of him slammed on her brakes and swerved on the Diagonal near the reservoir. He nearly hit her, but didn't. The car behind him had to perform defensive maneuvers to avoid hitting him, and ended up off on the side, needing to be pushed out of the mud to be able to drive on. All of this because there was a little ball of muddy fluff on the side of the road.

He sent home a photo of legs and a bushy tail, and the rest of an animal buried under a towel. I asked, who is that and how badly injured are they? It was a muddy baby skunk, who seemed to be in shock for some reason, but otherwise uninjured. I never learned what the original trauma was, and I doubt he knew it either. He called the Greenwood wildlife rehab center, and they declined to accept. They said call animal control. Deciding that would probably mean automatic euthanization, he did not choose that option. So he brought the tiny creature home in a shoebox, vowing to release him after dark (since they are nocturnal animals). He got a tub of water and washed off the mud, gently and carefully. He tried to offer a little cat food and some blueberries. Skunk wanted neither.

Although it appeared that the little guy had sprayed himself empty before he was picked up, he still had a generous dose of natural perfume about him. My front porch smelled like that aisle in Walmart where they sell the jelly shoes. It has been almost four hours since Mr S-P took him back to the reservoir and released him far away from the road, but I can still faintly smell him like the inside of my nose is coated with skunk scent. He was a cute little thing, I could tell from my safe vantage point inside the living room. I don't want one as a pet or anything, but it was fun to see one up close.

Now, so that the first photo on the list is not of the baby skunk, which I don't want as the representative image on the Facebook link, I will harken to the Disney Bambi, and pair flowers with my skunk story. I noticed yesterday that the two sets of mini roses, which I received as gifts when I had my breast cancer surgery last year, are thriving in my old garden, where we planted them last summer. The big roses struggled, but these two little ones took off. It made me happy to see.