Thoughts from Crow Cottage (My Main Blog.)

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A Skunk's Best Friend

A SKUNK'S BEST FRIEND

I am partial to skunks.

No, I do NOT enjoy their odiferous nature, and I have full knowledge of that readily identifiable scent from too many personal experiences with it.

Our dogs have been sprayed on several occasions, the last of which was a few months ago with our unsuspecting collie, Whitby, who only wanted to befriend the little guy while out on her nightly walkies! She got it in the face, unfortunately, and we spent some hours afterward doing the skunk-cleaning routine.

However, being the softie that I am, even though Mother Nature has seen fit to provide these creatures with a most unpleasant defense mechanism, I still have a soft spot for them in my heart -- imagine how lonely life must be for a skunk? Wherever they roam, be it in a wooded area, or out in civilization amongst humans and domesticated pets, they are hated and feared. Imagine if you were so hated and feared, no matter where you turned, every single soul you encountered put on a frightful expression and ran the other way? How lonely it must be in this world for these creatures of God.

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That said, I wanted to recount a story that made the front page of our local daily newspaper, The Salem News, today. The story is entitled "Skunk's Best Friend," written by Tom Dalton, a staff writer, and is as follows:

"Salem - Raul Baez was on his way to work when he came upon a scene so unbelievable that he stopped his car. There, in the middle of Federal Street, a skunk was spinning madly in circles with a plastic yogurt cup stuck on its head.

"It was 6:30 on a Sunday morning and Baez, 39, of Salem was driving to his job at a Chelsea restaurant warehouse. Wearing clean jeans and his favorite Red Sox jersey, [Ed: GO RED SOX!] he could have kept going and nobody would have blamed him. This was a skunk, after all, and the smell of the skunk's spray was already in the air.

"But he didn't keep going. Something made him get out of the car.

'In the beginning, I was just looking at him.' Baez said. 'But I was thinking, 'Who's going to help the skunk?' I felt sorry for him. His head was stuck, there was no light and maybe he was having a hard time to breathe in there. It wasn't a really big skunk. It was like a baby skunk.'

"As the skunk spun and spun, Baez moved around the animal and tried to snatch the yogurt container, looking like a contestant in a game of skill at a carnival. Three times the skunk spun by, and Baez made unsuccessful lunges at the plastic cup.

'The fourth time, I grab him,' Baez said of the Sept. 5 incident. 'It was pretty stuck in there. When I pulled the cup, I lifted the skunk in the air.'

"Finally, the yogurt container popped off the animal's head. Dazed, the skunk just sat there for several moments, apparently getting its bearings, and then it turned, trotted off into a yard and disappeared - without spraying anybody.

"When he got to work, Baez was almost an hour late. He tried to explain, but nobody really believed his story, he said. Several days later, he brought in photographs taken by Stanley Slysz, an amateur photographer from Salem who happened upon the scene.

"His co-workers were impressed -- sort of.

'They say, 'You crazy man.'

Baez laughs when he tells the story, and admits it was a little crazy. But he says there was nothing else he could do when he came upon a skunk with a yogurt cup on its head early one Sunday morning.

'Who's going to help him?' he asked."

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That's it. A simple story - about a simple act of kindness. A randam act of kindness, if you will.

I know there are many such stories out there in the world, but you'd never know it by watching the news on TV for the most part. We get pounded daily with politics as usual, back-stabbing politics that I am, personally, sick to death of hearing about. Yes, I want my guy to win (see below), but this election can't come and go too soon for me. I suppose I'll watch the debates, although I don't know why... they are pre-scripted and rehearsed, with questions being proffered in advance - what's the point, really? We all know already that Bush doesn't read much, if at all, and we also know that Kerry is a lot deeper than he appears on the campaign stump. The choice is clear, in my opinion, but no one has called ME to participate in one of those infamous polls, and I wonder who they really DO call to get their poll numbers? Has anyone out there been polled?

Oh gosh, here I go again, on politics. Sorry about that. I had intended this entry to be a nice little story about a kind act by a fellow citizen.

I'm just hoping that little baby skunk can enjoy his/her life to the fullest, and not wind up being flattened on some Salem road somewhere, like so many of his compatriots are. I brake for skunks, myself, and for birds, squirrels, and any living thing that gets in the path of my car. They seem to be the last vestiges of the "Innocents" left in this world, I think. The humans appear to be making a grand muddle of our poor planet, Earth!

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I am still on holiday here. I will write another entry soon, and will fill you in on all the little adventures we had during my first week of vacation. The rest of this week I am just "catching up" on chores, and sleeping later than usual (7 vs 6 a.m.!) It's so nice to have a few days OFF!

Cheers,

Bex

9:51 am - 22 September 2004

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