Graphotypy

01/08: Little Stinkers –

Our little family had planned a number of adventures for the month of July, activities that did not include “The Dog” and so my Mom and Dad were kind enough to take her. As we spent time on the beaches of Maine, and swatting at mosquitoes at camp in the Adirondacks, the Smell Hound spent time at her own little spa – morning walks with mom, plenty of cheese by-products and plenty of good water to slop in.

While the dog was lounging, the wildlife soon caught on to the absence of threat in the back yard. No dog meant free reign to left over cat food and chicken scraps. Arriving home one evening we found ourselves boxed into the back driveway – two skunks by the chickens, and one on the back porch. We soon found that these were adolescent skunks, not yet surly, not yet hardened to the rigors of skunk life. In other terms, slow on the draw. So, after searching through the back barn, looking in a clawfoot bathtubs, behind oak dressers and the ancient rototiller, it occurred to me that I had lent the multiple patched galvanized have-a-heart trap to our friends in town to capture stray cats (this ended up in further destruction of the already delicate trap, and a trip to the hospital for a vicious cat bite – but that is a story for another time). And so I was left to using my wits and an old fishing net I had found in the barn – a fools errand some may say, but Wednesday night I succeeded, one by one, in scooping up two small skunks. Despite what you may have thought all these years, the difficulty is not so much in scooping up an adolescent skunk in a net without being sprayed. No no, it is in remaining unsprayed as you dance around swinging said skunk in a net while your wife swears at you for asking her to close the lid on the garbage pail once skunk is deposited inside, and two little green-peace activists yell from the upstairs bedroom in the fading late their concern for the welfare of the creature.

Ah, nothing beats a darkened drive with your family through the back roads of upstate New York, to covertly drop off a skunk you have captured in a garbage can in the back of your RAV4. Toyota is missing a marketing opportunity here. And so we watched “cutie” disappear into the darkness. I caught one more that night – and one more last night (Otis), with the live trap – not nearly as competitive or sporting, but oddly slightly more smelly.