This story was inspired by roadkill. Last Saturday, as my wife and I headed to Terre Haute over our usual route, a humpbacked country road that’s dotted with bridges and culverts and creeks, I steered the family wagon over the corpse of a dead skunk, struck down in the prime of life, no doubt, by a speeding pickup truck.
As we drove along, waiting for the inevitable fragrance to waft into the car, I made the off-handed comment that we’d be seeing more skunks over the next few weeks; it seems as though this is the time of year we spot the little striped stinkers along the roads.
I’ve owned or lived near the woods my whole life, and I have never seen a skunk in the wild. It has always been my understanding that they are reclusive, totally unlike the image of the amorous Pepe’ Le Pew that I have snuggled in my head since my cartoon-watching days.
When I say that I have never seen a skunk in the wild, I don’t want you to believe that I have never seen a skunk. As I often have related in this space, I grew up amid a Dr. Doolittle-like menagerie of living things. My brother, John, sister, Lora, and I always had animals in and around our place as we grew up. From a mule named Rosie to Sammy, our pet raccoon, we spent a good deal of our time as kids with four-legged, feathered or scaled companions. I even had a pet crow.
Two of those childhood playmates were a pair of skunks my brother brought home. He had traded for them, perhaps for a few tropical fish — we had as many as 10 or 15 aquariums gurgling at a time in our utility room — but whatever “deal” he got for them, they were one pair of creatures my mom never really warmed up to.
We named them Aroma and Incense, and despite the fact that they were “de-scented,” they more than lived up to their ironic names. I can’t even remember what we fed them, but various flavors of cat food come to mind. We kept them in a cage on our back porch, and since their domicile sat just a few feet from my parents’ bedroom window, it didn’t take long for their nighttime scratching and grunting to further alienate them when it came to Mom. John eventually worked out another trade, for a parrot, I believe, but that’s a whole other story…
At least one other skunk came to visit our house when I was a kid. It decided to take up temporary residence in the crawl space under our kitchen. Either it was scared of the dark or of the noises coming from the floorboards above him, because we soon caught a whiff of his musk, so much in fact that my mom eventually loaded us into the car and took us up the road to stay at Lucille Harrison’s house until our place aired out. We were lucky, the skunk apparently found better digs, and left the house soon after we did.
The skunks we see in Indiana are of the striped variety.
According to the Division of Natural Resources (DNR) Web site, skunks are about the most misunderstood creatures there are. Skunks are, for the most part, excessively neat animals, and they are not unusually aggressive; they eat insects and rodents, although an occasional chicken house raid is not out of the question for they enjoy eggs almost as much as I do.
Skunks mate primarily in mid-March; the proud parents produce four to six mouse-sized (would you refer to them as skunkettes?) youngsters about two months later. Mother skunks are known to be fiercely protective and great teachers; the young skunks stay with their mom for about two months before heading out on their own.
Skunks are actually members of the weasel family — minks, too — but they are actually one of nature’s klutzes, unlike their more graceful cousins. A skunk’s head is small, his legs short, and since most skunks tend to be a little on the chunky side, they waddle like a catcher who’s just handled a triple-header. They hibernate in very cold weather, and for most part, they tend to move about in the dark, spending their daylight hours in their burrows — often cohabitating with groundhogs — in Garfieldesque repose.
Years ago — before I ever knew her — my wife took off after supper one night to find her horse, Annie. She kept the horse in a separate pasture than her sister’s horses, and Joanie wanted to be sure that Annie was all right. As she walked along a fence line, flashlight in hand, she heard what she thought was Annie crunching through the dry fall leaves. When she turned, the beam of the light landed on a skunk, and instead of stomping its feet or raking at the leaves or arching its back and hissing or raising its tail — all warning signs that chemical warfare is about commence — the skunk merely continued to walk toward her as if it were a lost pet. Joanie hardly stayed put to meet her new friend.
According to a book she brought to me from her library last week — yes, I will even read “Zoobooks” from an elementary library — skunks can spray their musk (n-butyl mercaptan, if you want to be technical) about 15 feet. The skunk’s weaponry includes a remarkable nozzle located just below its tail; the fluid is so potent that any animal, humans included, can be temporarily blinded by it.
From what I have read, much of my property is prime skunk territory. It is hilly with all sorts of nooks and crannies for burrows, yet it flattens out into a broad wetlands dotted with ponds and shallow streams. Skunks, like raccoons, enjoy the occasional buffet of crawdads and minnows, too.
Through personal experience, I can say that skunks have a reputation they don’t deserve. It’s been years, but I can still hear in my head the likes of Chill Wills or Jack Elam referring to their adversaries in second-rate Westerns as “low-down, dirty skunks.” I even recall my Grandpa Roy’s references to those who’d done him wrong as skunks, too; it was about as tough of language I ever heard from him.
Me, well, I hope my hillsides are home to as many skunks who can borrow a burrow. Sure beats having them in my crawlspace…
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or by regular mail c/o the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. He’ll be at the Paris, Ill., Public Library on May 5, signing his book, “The Off Season: The Newspaper Stories of Mike Lunsford.” Learn more about the book on Lunsford’s Web site, www.mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: Story inspired by roadkill really stinks
- Mike Lunsford
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
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