Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 8, 1993 TAG: 9303080734
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BUSHEL OF LAUGHS
DRIVING home the other night, I almost hit a skunk.I was glad I didn't.
I've had a few close encounters with skunks. Through the grace of absolutely dumb luck, each time I've come out smelling like a rose.
There was one summer when a mother skunk and her kits visited our mulberry tree almost every night to forage among the berries. This was a long time ago: back before I had a telephoto lens for my camera, back when I was stupid enough to try to get real close to take their pictures.
Each evening, after sundown but before dark, Mother Skunk and her kittens appeared from the general direction of the mock orange bush; crossed in front of the porch, foraged awhile, crossed back in front of the porch; then disappeared, again in the general direction of the mock orange. The kits stayed so close to Mom that I couldn't get an accurate count. Seven or eight, at least.
The evening of the "shoot," I crept down toward the mulberry from the opposite direction. Potentially head-to-head with the skunks. All the better to shoot them, I thought.
Closer. Closer. Snap, snap, snap.
Honestly, I don't know how I escaped. Because Mom saw me. She gathered up her children furiously and skedaddled, tail waving. But I got a great roll of film.
Another night, I and a skunk ended up in the woodshed at the same time. He looked at me. I looked at him. He lit out of there. You can bet I stood absolutely still, in as non-threatening a manner as I could muster, until he was gone.
But my closest brush with a skunk, and the zenith of my pure dumb skunk luck, covered a couple of days on the raggedy end of one summer.
This skunk was miserably ill, probably rabid. In broad daylight he staggered around the yard, nose to the ground, unable to bolt at my presence.
I knew this was a dangerous situation, so I called the Floyd County sheriff's office seeking help. "`Well," the dispatcher drawled, "we used to have an animal control officer. But he died." (This was a good many years ago.)
So I explained the situation - including the part about my not knowing how to shoot the shotgun - and asked for advice.
"Well," the dispatcher advised, "if I was you, I'd get me a bushel basket and throw it over the thing until you can get somebody to come who can shoot the gun."
Now, in retrospect, I realize that that amazing "advice" was most certainly offered in jest. Tongue in cheek. With the pure certain knowledge that this girl on the phone didn't have the sense God gave little green apples if she didn't know better than to try a darn fool thing like that.
But. I got me a bushel basket and . . . .
Fortunately for me, the skunk escaped. And the next day, when he again wandered miserably into the yard, someone with a working knowledge of the shotgun put him out of his misery.
A couple of years back, and many years after I'd chased a rabid skunk through the yard with a bushel basket in hand, the Current section of this newspaper ran an informative article about skunks. It ended with this paragraph:
" . . . as one employee in the Floyd County Sheriff's Department put it, skunks demonstrate that `God has a sense of humor.' "
As do employees in the Floyd County Sheriff's Department.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.