Fortunate



Appalachian glow over Nell's Hill, Warrington Township, York County, Pennsylvania



I suspect the long non-winter is about over, presumably to be replaced with an early spring. This morning Dog found a beautiful and large skunk, and no, I don’t have any stinking stories to report. Fortunately.

Skunks aren’t true hibernators, but they do den up for the winter. The fact that this one was out and about tells me he or she is done with all that for this season. We encountered the skunk, only the third one I’ve actually seen on the mountain, around 6 a.m., when I still needed my headlamp. We were walking through ski resort’s dirt parking lot, along the edge of the woods. Dog was on a long lead, ranging a bit ahead and over to one side. The skunk quickly scurried away from us. Dog tried to give chase, but encountered the far end of the long lead before he encountered the skunk. Fortunately for us all.

I guess it was two years ago that Dog met up with a baby skunk and got close enough for a passing spray. He didn’t take a full shot by any means, but he still spent a week sleeping out on the back deck. Tomato juice baths helped, but not enough to have him in the cabin. Fortunately for him the weather was warm enough then that this was no hardship. After a week the weather turned stormy, and I brought him inside again. I could still get a whiff of that that skunk in damp weather for at least another week after that.

But back to today’s skunk. It’s out. It’s about. So even this non-winter must be at an end. Unfortunately.

Skunk 1, Dog 0

Last night around 10 p.m. Dog got skunked. The skunk in question was small, hardly more than kitten-sized. I didn’t see it until it was too late. I glimpsed it for a second in my headlamp before I saw what happened and attended to Dog.

Fortunately, the stink is not as bad as it might have been. Perhaps it wasn’t a clear shot. I wiped Dog down with a baby wipe and will wipe again when I get home today. But until I can’t smell that smell, he is banished to the back deck.

Do you think he looks repentant? Perhaps he does a little but not nearly as much as he should look. This was only the second skunk I’ve seen at Roundtop. The first was shortly after I moved in nearly 20 years ago and that one was an adult tiptoeing carefully down a dirt access road.

The encounter lasted but half a second or less. Dog himself is fine. If there was any actual physical contact between the two there is no sign of it. This skunk was across the driveway at the edge of the lane, and I thought Dog was heading over there to do his business. Guess not. I suspect he won’t be so eager the next time if he finds another skunk.