I had just let Pepper out when I noticed a weird-looking animal near my husband’s workshop about a hundred feet away. It was acting crazy, sticking its nose high in the air and prancing back and forth as if to impress its mate. Pepper was having a hissy fit, barking and pulling on her chain like a junkyard dog when suddenly, the animal charged toward her! I yelled and clapped my hands, scaring it away. A few seconds later, it charged after Pepper again! I’m scared for both of us now, because now this, seemingly harmless fox we’d been seeing in our yard obviously has rabies.
I picked up the broom I keep on the deck, and screamed for my husband to get out here quick! Quick is slow motion for old people, and I didn’t have that much time to wait. So, armed with my broom and terrifying screams, the fox decided it wasn’t worth fighting a little yapping dog and crazy old lady all in one day, so it turned and high-tailed it from the yard.
We called the sheriff’s department, and within minutes we had a Calvary of neighbors and police armed and ready to put the poor animal out of its misery, but it was long-gone.
Then, one evening, as my husband was locking up his shop, he nearly collided with a skunk that had wandered by. Motionless, they stood eye-balling each other, wondering who was going to move first, and it wasn’t going to be my husband. After a few long seconds, the showdown was over, and the skunk waddled off into the woods.
And speaking of skunks. When we were kids, my brothers found three baby skunks and snuck them in the house to play with them. When mom and dad found out about it, they said we could keep them in a box outside. It was so cool having skunks as pets. But the next morning, my fickle brain decided that Florence, my animal-lover friend down the road, would rather have it instead. I was wrong! As Florence stood wide-eyed stammering like a child learning to read, her mother stormed into her sparkling clean kitchen and yelled, “Get that thing out of my house!”
Feeling stripped naked on Time Square, I hurried out the door and headed back home. Suddenly, the skunk bit me! Determined to reunite him with his siblings, I started to jog. Then, he bit me again! And then again! That’s when I dropped him, and when he sprayed me, and when I choked, and gagged, and coughed my head off. It’s a smell from hell! A smell that can penetrate your car and stay there for miles down the road. But when you encounter it close up, and your entire being is melting and dripping in a cloud of skunk spray, there are no words to describe it. You’ll just have to find out for yourself.
A normal kid would have left him there, but normal isn’t in my DNA. Dazed and confused, I reached down, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and like a drunk on a three-day binge, staggered the rest of the way home and straight into the kitchen, where my dad sat quietly eating a bowl of cereal. He probably thought he’d seen it all in WWII. But that was before his idiot daughter staggered through the kitchen door with a skunk dangling from her hand, smelling worse than a cesspool and crying, “He sprayed me, daddy!”
He probably wished that he had kept the skunk and put me on a slow boat to China!
THE END!
Straight From the Heart 