On Skunks

While I was dogsitting for my dad last week, I came back to the house to find a friendly visitor in the front yard. No, it wasn't the well-meaning but overly personable mentally challenged guy from down the drive; yes, it was a skunk as the title suggests.

At first I just kept approaching the thing. I was busy, still singing in my head from the drive up with the wind in my face and a blaring radio. Then I realized there was a critter in front of me.

First thought? "Oh, aren't you cute! What the hell are you?" This is a fair question. This wasn't the kind of skunk you see in movies. With it's tail down and fir immaculately groomed (and without his Winter plump), it just looks like some kind of skinny, black ferret. "What are you doing eating our yard seeds in the daytime, little ferret?"

About then process of elimination as to hat this odd little thing was started to pick up. I examined the adorable little hands and the shorter fur and the long snout, and I reached the conclusion "skunk" right as I caught a glint of white on its tail.

And yet I'm still an idiot.

Next thoughts? "Oh, awesome, I'm so close. That thing is really cute! It looks like that pink-nosed skunk bitch from Bambi. What was its name, again? (It was "Flower.") I wonder if I can pet it. I wonder if someone lost it. People keep skunks as pets. They just get them de-scented-"

"FUCK SHIT ASS!"

There's a reason people have to get their pet skunks de-scented. Suddenly everything about what skunks do when they're scared came back to me, but, not surprisingly at this point, it never occurred to me that my respect for all cuddly mammals and general suaveness might not placate the skunk.

I figured I wasn't scared of him, he shouldn't be afraid of me. We're both critters. If I can go about my day without bothering him, he should respect that and do the same. We'll be buddies.

Finally this train of thought seemed what we'll call "stupid." I wondered if I could just get passed the skunk and into the house on the walkway. There was a good four or five feet of space. As I inched forward in a very purposeful but oblivious manner, Mr. Skunk raised his tail an almost imperceptible degree higher and stopped chewing the seed he had found.

Remembering that skunks can shoot a concentrated stream of stank accurately distances of up to ten feet, I slowly backed away and waited until my not-friend went back to his nuts and seeds.

I ended up getting inside by taking a wide arc around the little guy, well out of ass-stink range, all the while not pointing in his direction, trying to reduce the amount of fear pheromones I was pumping through calming exercises, and just generally giving off the air of an animal that came across another animal it knows and doesn't want to bother.

Only later did I remember: I fucking hated Flower. Little pink-nosed bitch ruined my concept of Pepé Le Pew for me forever. Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure she was just constantly rolling ecstasy. Nothing always that happy.

On Cajones

You ever see a dead critter on the side of the road? I mean right on the side, not in the middle or part-way in like he made it about as far as the average distance of an outer wheel from the shoulder, I mean right on the edge.

I use to think that guy was just shit at crossing roads. Dude, you made it like a foot and a half. That's not very impressive. You basically died at the first opportunity. You're those guys on the beach from the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan." Yeah, it's stacked against you, but jeeze!

But then I realized something. A good percentage of those dead critters I see on the road's periphery are pointed towards the woods, away from the center of the highway. Sure, I suppose a number of those tried to turn around and run back–the cowards!–but I have to assume, statistically, some of those animals made it all the way from the other side of the motorway. Granted, they weren't the Ultimate Street Crossing Champion like any of their friends who managed to make it across the street, but those guys did a pretty damned good job. They went for it and, yeah, they failed, but they almost didn't. (To extend the "Private Ryan" analogy, I guess these guys are like that one soldier who walks around in a daze picking up severed limbs to see if they're his. Yeah, he's pretty screwed, but what a trooper.)

So just imagine the cajones on those critters that go ahead and take that last long trek. It's only a road to us, but even the biggest raccoon tops out around 25 or 30 pounds. Lets take a conservative estimate and say the average raccoon's about 20 lbs. He eats well, but he's still spry. That's still more than eight times smaller than the average American by weight. By height, he's like a fifth of us.

Have you ever tried to cross a highway without a crosswalk? With speeding cars? At night?

No, you likely have not. But wait, it's far worse for out little raccoon friend. It's hard enough to cross a highway as a person, now consider that for a creature about 18" long and weighing only 20 lbs.

Try imagining a highway that is from end-to end not four lanes wide (plus a median), but twenty lanes wide. Now imagine that instead of every day cars about 16 feet long and weighing 1.5 tons, cars are eighty feet long and twenty feet wide and weigh as much as 32,000 pounds traveling upwards of three hundred miles per hour. Now imagine you've never seen shit like this before in your life.

That's what squirrels and raccoons and badgers and skunks and cats and deer do every day. They're all fucking lunatics. The ones that make it back must seem like action heroes to all the other woodland critters. They come to this impenetrable river of death and say, "No, Mother, I must go! There must be something beyond the great divide. Perhaps we will find a new source of food, a new lace to live! If only just one of us has the courage to try. I will return for you, Mother. For all of you."


But yeah, most of them went out about two feet, froze, and got whacked trying to make it back, crawling away like little bitches.

On Bees

This afternoon a bumble bee sort of floated up to my second story window all gentle like, fat and slow and happy like an Air Hogs^TM brand personal aircraft toy.

I fucking hate wasps, and yellow jackets, and even those regular skinny bees that are just essentially tiny wasps or yellow jackets. Any way I try not to freak out, but I always keep to bobbing and weaving and keeping the damned things from landing on my at all. I've only been stung once and I'm not allergic, it just sucks to get stung by a bee.

But bumble bees?

Shit, they're my buds. We get along like flowers and, well, bees.

They're just so damned cute. All round and fuzzy. Where do they get off, really? I see a bumble bee floating around me, my first instinct isn't, "OH FUCK OH FUCK OH GEEZE GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF AAAAAHHHHHHGH!!!!"

It's more like, "Aw maaaa, yeeeaaaaahh…. Hells yeah, little guy! Or girl. You're all girls, right? That's cool. I'm down with equal opportunity insecting. Whatchu up to today, girl? You got some pollen off a dandy-lion or somethin'? That's pretty sweet, yo."

People freak out around bees and go spastic and put all those fear pheromones into the air and that just scares the bee. It lands on you and goes nuts and stings you and then it dies and you're in pain.

But a bumble bee lands on me it doesn't sense fear. All it says is, "Oh! Hey. That's a thing. Alright. Peace out, weird big thing," and flies off.

Hells yeah. I'm a thing.