I don’t mean to anthropomorphize here (spell check doesn’t know it, I know it but no way I am going to try to say it out loud) but skunks are morons.
Skunks rule: they score a solid 10/10 on the cuteness scale,
they eat bugs that would otherwise eat your budding flower and fruit seedlings,
they look totally awesome and they have a self preservation defense mechanism
which you and I as humans discreetly crave.
Come on, admit it, we have a preternatural instinct to shit on that
which we don’t like- for crying out loud it was beautifully articulated in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I am just saying I love skunks.
But man they must be dumber than rocks, for all the trouble
they manage to get into that even your average poorly-bred three-year old human
can avoid. I read on the internet that
there is a movement urging Yoplait® to change the design of their yogurt cups
since so many skunks- around the world! - manage to get their heads stuck
inside them while they are grazing our trash cans and dumpsters. I’ve freed a
handful of them from yogurt cups over the years and I simply assume they trot
away looking for their next slurp of blueberry & vanilla backwash.
These little black and white idiots apparently also are
sports fans. Where I work, our skunks
have miles and miles of wildland space to forage, and yet, in only the last
year I have found them completely entangled in field-goal netting at the local
high school football field, a street hockey net over at the state park and this
morning bound up in some kind of baseball backstop net inside this one lady’s
garage.
I rolled up to the garage this morning and the lady was
waiting for me. I think I said something
like this was my second skunk in netting in 2 weeks.
“Did the net survive?”
I thought she meant the skunk, and as I rifled through my
tool box for wire cutters, paramedic shears, nutro-cal and a tongue depressor I
explained how of course I was able to transport it to a local wildlife
rehabilitation center to make sure it was rehydrated, its laceration injuries
were treated and it was released back to the wild shortly thereafter.
“No. I asked, did the
netting survive? We just bought this baseball backstop and it cost $XX.00!”
“The netting never survives. Ever.” (Solid eye-contact too- she got the point.)
I grabbed a blankie from one of my truck’s kennels and
headed into the garage.
Where I work, skunks are like the second highest creature on
the county health department’s rabies list.
Right under bats. When I first
stumbled my way into this job, I dealt with skunks at more than just arm’s
length- I used the longest catch pole in the tool section, and destroyed more
pairs of bullet-proof welder’s gloves (we call them raptor gloves, sounds
cooler) than our budget allowed for.
Over time, I realized something.
Skunks- especially the babies, which most commonly reveal
themselves to be retards- are pretty
much docile creatures. They deploy their God-given self-defense juice when they
need to, and often. But when they get
into trouble, and by the time someone like me finds them, they are simply
gassed out. Wrong phrase: they still spray.
But their energy level is diminished, they are low on blood sugar &
water, and for whatever reason, they can’t bite through my cool crack-head
frisking gloves I saw on COPS last year and ordered on-line during the very
next commercial break.
I cut the shit out of the lady’s baseball netting... and wrapped
my putrid-smelling project into a sweet zebra-striped blankie, swabbed some
nutro-cal onto its cute little tongue and shoved it into a bush in her back
yard.
My boss kicked me out of the animal shelter when I got back
to do some paperwork, apparently I got more of the little guy’s fragrance on my
uniform than I thought and was making the rest of the staff sick. Also, I had lunch with my partner later and
she made me get us a table outside.
Whatever, The Bride’s not home yet and The Dog seems to like me more
than usual. (The gloves are in the trash
can in the side yard.)
