(To listen to the following essay, click here.)
Nothing clears out a room faster than a skunk and a dog fighting on a porch.
There we were, sitting around in the kitchen after dinner and someone let the dog out. Within a minute the room was cleared and the dog was a mess. The skunk escaped. A later search of the barn and there she was – a big, fat, hungry black and white demon. I grabbed the ‘have a heart’ trap, slathered organic peanut butter on the trigger and set it.
Two days later she was caught. Early morning and skunk in a trap – a big skunk in a small cage. I did not think she could spray – she couldn’t raise her tail – but I gave wide berth. A bunch of kids were coming over after school, so I wrapped the trap in a blanket and gingerly moved her out of the barn – no sense in giving them something to poke at. I carried the skunk to the clearing by the river.
I had no intention of releasing her. To be clear I planned to kill her. It was just a question of how. One friend recommended throwing the trap into the river, Mob Like, tethered to shore by a rope so I would not lose the trap. I could borrow a buddy’s .22 pistol, but honestly wondered if I could be that direct. I could just leave her in the trap to starve. As awful as this all sounds, once your dog’s been sprayed and the kitchen left to smell so hard eyes water, humanity evaporates.
I came home from work and as I continued to plot the skunk’s death, the kids and their friends were running around outside. And then two of them ran up to me. I was not even out of the car.
“Dad! We saw the skunk!! What are you planning to do?”
My son’s friend, Emily, looked at me as only a kid can. “Promise me you are not going to kill it."
Nothing pulls you back to planet earth quicker than a child. What was I thinking? Starve an animal to death in a cage? Toss it in a river?
The next morning, after asking for volunteers, my brave little girl and I drove, slowly, skunk in the trap, wrapped in a blanket, gingerly placed in the way back of the wagon, to the end of the road. We walked along an old trail. The foliage was bright. I set the trap down, squirming skunk hidden inside. I took the door off the trap and then quietly peeled away the blanket. The skunk was curled in the far corner of the trap. It looked up at me, gingerly, scared, more puppy than vermin. My little girl and I climbed back into the car to watch.
A minute went by and then, like a cat, the skunk sloped off into the woods.
The dog is now very clean, the porch and kitchen don’t smell; the skunk did not spray inside the car (I would never have lived that down) and, most importantly, I do not have on my conscience tossing a sweet skunk into a churning river. Thanks, Emily, for being a kid.
David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio
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