The rather pleasant - from a distance - scent of skunk once again fills the night air, and I remember an incident from last week that has made me think.
My spouse and I were walking home from the Tea House in Stanley Park after a lovely dinner on the patio, watching the sun go down surrounded by puffy clouds. We were in mid-conversation when we heard someone whisper loudly (like a stage whisper) "Watch out! There's a skunk over there!"
Looking ahead of us we saw the skunk. We glanced back, and saw a couple of humans who were apparently hiding from the skunk. (All things considered, it was likely the humans, not the skunk who whispered the warning.)
The skunk was just crossing the path in front of us, so we slowed down, let it amble on it's way, and then kept going past the skunk. We know the skunks, they live here, we live here, we all try to keep out of each other's way. (And oddly enough, skunks DO smell of skunk just walking around... the creators of Pepe Le Pew had it right.)
But thinking about it now... I don't know if the whispering humans made it past the skunk.
We have had many nights of smelling skunk lately, so someone has been scaring them. We find the scent infinitely preferable to the cancer stick smoke coming up from one of our neighbors who likes to smoke on his balcony, and it keeps him off the balcony, so it even has a bonus! But it has been very frequent.
Hiding from a skunk doesn't actually make any sense. It's when they get frightened that they spray and run. If the skunk doesn't see you until you pop out from behind something... that's a frightening kind of thing. The whispering humans may have found this out... I do hope not, but I am wondering now if they simply followed our example (giving the skunk a wide berth and walking slowly by) or if they panicked and scared themselves and the skunk into more of a life story than they had planned to tell for the rest of their lives!
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