Thursday, January 24, 2008

White flags in the darkness

When I left home this morning, I got about a quarter-mile down the road and went around a slight curve. There on the side of the road I saw something that I immediately recognized yet had never seen before. It was an interesting sensation.

There in the light of my truck's headlights, on the roadside I saw the undersides of two bushy white tails pointing straight at the sky.

Not one, but two skunks in full battle mode, and I was right in their kill zone.

I swerved to the far side of the road, but it's very narrow county road and there isn't much room to swerve. I only caught a little collateral damage. It wasn't too bad. Actually I've been through worse, when it comes to skunks.

I don't know what set them off, because they seemed to be going at it before I got there and I just got caught in the crossfire.

But seeing those two tails pointing straight up was...like I said, an interesting sensation. I had never seen a skunk that close up from that end before.

UPDATE: I thought I might add...back in my younger days when I spent winters trapping, I occasionally caught a skunk. So I have been much closer than this to skunks, without the protection of a vehicle, but I always approached them from the "safe" end. Of course I had to dispatch the skunk and remove it from the trap. This always meant the trap had to be retired for the season, of course.

2 comments:

  1. A long time ago in a land far away, I lived in the country outside of Springfield MA. There was a great bar called the "Fifth Season" just up the road about a mile or so, well within walking distance.

    One night walking to the bar, a cat started keeping pace with me. We were walking along just fine, me talking to the cat, when a car came along. My cat had white stripes running down it's back.

    I stopped and it continued on. Turned out to be a pretty good night.

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  2. I've been within 5 feet of wild skunks without being hit. Scary, though.

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