Just Another Skunk Story

They really are cute, skunks that is. But who wants to go near them?

I knew a girl in high school, that loved the smell of skunk. I think she was a little off. Although I guess if you get sprayed, it's better to love it, because boy does it stick with you. My two big dogs got sprayed, we let them in the house before we noticed. They rubbed themselves on the walls in the hall. Several cans of tomato juice and bottles of shampoo later, the smell was almost off the dogs and walls, but even our clothing in the closed drawers 2 rooms away absorbed the smell and took months to finally clear out. Lovely.

This all happened before that particular camping trip.

It was our first time camping in the Mohican Valley.  It's so pretty there, the river is beautiful and there are lots of canoe and boat rentals to ride it. We had a pop up camper that was so fun to use. We got it after we camped by a small lake on our honeymoon, and the rains from the hills made the lake rise into our tent. Bad honeymoon, another story.

This was not like our "city" campgrounds. This was in the deep woods, lots of beautiful wilderness. The first night we built a big campfire and sat around with the two kids. We heard yelling from other campsites. Apparently skunks came out and scavenged for food left out by campers. One skunk waddled into our campsite. Jon and the kids ran away like the cowards that the rest of the campers were. They hid in the camper. Not me, I knew that wild animals wouldn't come near a fire, right?

I stood my ground and sat in my camp chair by the fire. This skunk apparently didn't know the rules of camping, he moved closer and closer. By this time, it was too late for me to move, I might scare the little guy into releasing that awful odor on me. Those stinking little bastards knew what they were doing, they came out after sunset and made everyone run for their tents while they grabbed the abandoned hot dogs and s'more makings.

I sat there, while my family looked on, laughing and taunting. The bold skunk came closer and I was stuck to my chair frozen with fear. He came right by the fire, and started rubbing against my leg like a cat. The howls from the tent were loud enough to scare that skunk, but these were no ordinary skunks. These were totally undaunted by anything a human was brave enough to do.

Fortunately, we didn't have any snacks by the fire yet that night. And eventually the skunk was bored by my lack of attention and food so it wandered off to the next site. Once I knew it was safe, I ran to the camper and didn't come out until morning.

We still camped there, for years actually. We just new when it was time for the skunks to come out, and laughed at the other newbie campers, shocked by their first night visitors.