Hey, everyone. As you know, I'm an observer of animals and have always been fascinated by them. One thing that's neat about animals in general is their ability to surprise you.
A case in point is an old buddy of mine who has some baggage. He is a skunk, in the truest sense of the word. You know, with the white stripe down his back and the whole enchalada. Don't get me wrong, Bugs and I were never really close. In fact, I don't suppose you could call us friends. We just tolerated each other with a healthy respect for each others' capabilities. At the time I met Bugs, I was working a night-shift job at a plant that supplied river water to a power plant. The water was used to cool the steam which had just passed through the turbo-generator blades and turn it back into water for recycling.
Out at the river was a lonely place to work at night. On summer evenings I would sit out on the pump deck and enjoy the cool breeze and maybe watch a storm drift majestically by.
There was a skunk who lived under a nearby water tank. He had dug a hole there and doubtless enjoyed the cool concrete of the tank.
On warm nights, insects would swarm around a big light not far from where I sat. This skunk would come over and eat the bugs and moths that gathered around the light. For this reason I called him Bugs, due to his peculiar eating habits. I could stand within 10 feet of him and he became so used to me that he didn't seem to mind.
Sometimes I would throw a little fruit out on the grass, like an overripe banana, or a few fragments of the watermelon I had eaten. I'd see Bugs come around later in the evening and he'd really chow down on the fruit.
Then Bugs started to sleep on the seat of the lawnmower we kept in an old shed. He'd leave his white hairs on the cloth seat which irritated me. Was he concerned that I was irritated? No, I think not. One day, when I cranked the mower, he came scuttling out from under the deck in alarm, a foul odor imminating from the little bounder. I rolled off the seat of the mower on the opposite side of the mower from him, and fled, keeping the mower between him and myself.
On cool nights, Bugs liked to lay under my car and savor the residual heat from my engine. When I'd start the car and pull away, I'd see him run off, leaving a trail of odor behind him.
This sort of thing went on for years. For a while, Bugs liked to hang out in a big drain pipe that went from one side of the road to the other.He was always around, it seemed, to startle me when I was making my rounds. I grew fond of him, sort of.
One cool night as I left work, I began to smell a skunk and I looked behind me to see if Bugs was running away to the hole under the tank. He wasn't. About a mile up the road, I heard a horrible racket. I guess Bugs had crawled up into the engine compartment to get warm. He must have made contact with the fan and when he fell to the pavement my wheels passed over him.
All that Bugs had for an epitaph was a horrible smell on my car and these few words I have penned. He was my kinda-sorta friend and he was a good little dude.
From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.
A case in point is an old buddy of mine who has some baggage. He is a skunk, in the truest sense of the word. You know, with the white stripe down his back and the whole enchalada. Don't get me wrong, Bugs and I were never really close. In fact, I don't suppose you could call us friends. We just tolerated each other with a healthy respect for each others' capabilities. At the time I met Bugs, I was working a night-shift job at a plant that supplied river water to a power plant. The water was used to cool the steam which had just passed through the turbo-generator blades and turn it back into water for recycling.
Out at the river was a lonely place to work at night. On summer evenings I would sit out on the pump deck and enjoy the cool breeze and maybe watch a storm drift majestically by.
There was a skunk who lived under a nearby water tank. He had dug a hole there and doubtless enjoyed the cool concrete of the tank.
On warm nights, insects would swarm around a big light not far from where I sat. This skunk would come over and eat the bugs and moths that gathered around the light. For this reason I called him Bugs, due to his peculiar eating habits. I could stand within 10 feet of him and he became so used to me that he didn't seem to mind.
Sometimes I would throw a little fruit out on the grass, like an overripe banana, or a few fragments of the watermelon I had eaten. I'd see Bugs come around later in the evening and he'd really chow down on the fruit.
Then Bugs started to sleep on the seat of the lawnmower we kept in an old shed. He'd leave his white hairs on the cloth seat which irritated me. Was he concerned that I was irritated? No, I think not. One day, when I cranked the mower, he came scuttling out from under the deck in alarm, a foul odor imminating from the little bounder. I rolled off the seat of the mower on the opposite side of the mower from him, and fled, keeping the mower between him and myself.
On cool nights, Bugs liked to lay under my car and savor the residual heat from my engine. When I'd start the car and pull away, I'd see him run off, leaving a trail of odor behind him.
This sort of thing went on for years. For a while, Bugs liked to hang out in a big drain pipe that went from one side of the road to the other.He was always around, it seemed, to startle me when I was making my rounds. I grew fond of him, sort of.
One cool night as I left work, I began to smell a skunk and I looked behind me to see if Bugs was running away to the hole under the tank. He wasn't. About a mile up the road, I heard a horrible racket. I guess Bugs had crawled up into the engine compartment to get warm. He must have made contact with the fan and when he fell to the pavement my wheels passed over him.
All that Bugs had for an epitaph was a horrible smell on my car and these few words I have penned. He was my kinda-sorta friend and he was a good little dude.
From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.
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