Skunks in my life

Warning:  The following contains material that may be disturbing, thus: “Viewer/reader/listener discretion is advised,”  (Good luck with that.)

Recently, my niece (who grew up an archetypal Valley Girl in Southern California) put on FaceBook a post that stirred memories: “Out of curiosity has anyone ever been in the vicinity of a skunk spray, but not the actual victim of the spray?? Both Koda and Chewy went after a skunk and I got out of the car to tell at them to leave it and they got sprayed and I smell like a f'ing skunk. I put my clothes outside, but I think it's in my hair and skin! I can't even stand to be in the room with myself!!! This is no Bueno... Well tomorrow we will be smoking pork, so maybe I'll just smell like smoke to cover the skunk! Good times.. When you can laugh at it all! I gotta smell me while I'm sleeping. I made the whole house stink! ”

 Among the memories her story brought me: Mitzie, a pet cat that lived to be about 18 or so.  When she was young, almost daily she brought home a kill to share her success, left on the porch, or if my mother was not careful, on the kitchen floor: mostly mice or shrews, but also sparrows, snakes, young rabbits and squirrels.  I praised her, took the trophy and oohed and aahed over it and returned it to her, so that once I could rescue a hummingbird unharmed and let it go.  When I was 8 or 9, she came home soaking wet from a close encounter, skunk spray dripping off her face and shoulders.  She looked miserable and smelled worse.  Mother filled a wash tub with a few inches of warm water, put the cat into it and lathered her copiously.  The cat, despite her inherited hatred of bathing, sat perfectly still while mother scrubbed, rinsed, and scrubbed some more.  I don’t know what kind of soap mother used, but when the cat was finally fluffed dry, she was happy again, and I think, never tackled another skunk.

 I like skunk smell—at a distance.  In the spring, we used to sleep with the windows open; lovelorn skunks wandered by and we could smell them.  To me, it was the smell of spring.

I used to feed barn cats in the tack room where I also kept dog, horse, and cattle feed in metal cans to discourage pilfering.  The cats were largely feral so I saw them only at a distance, but I enjoyed seeing them hunt in the pastures and I assumed they kept the mouse population under control.  A neighbor girl used to hunt through the mangers and the loft to find the nests with kittens.  She played with them and brought them to the house to show us, so over generations the cats became tamer.  Not so the skunks who also visited the tack room for the cat food, easier fare than they could find in the wild.  I once went into the tack room, turned on the light, and standing there was a surprised full-grown skunk staring at me.  He pounded a front paw on the ground several times to warn me to stay away.  I did not need further warning.  I backed out and left the door open to make his retreat as easy as mine.  After that encounter, I left the tack room light on all the time.

When the skunks became a nuisance, I started live-trapping.  They happily enter a large wire-mesh trap for the cat food I place on the spring plate.  I approach the trapped skunk holding a tarp wide in front of me so the skunk will not be frightened and spray. I wrap the tarp around the trap, and place it in the back of my pickup.  I used to carry the trap to the trail near the boat ramp at the north end of Willamette Park.  There I opened an end to let the skunk escape into the woods by the river.  I knew this was largely a futile exercise.  Mostly, wild animals are territorial; if a stranger enters an animal’s territory, the resident animal chases it away, or it moves further away itself.  I pictured a line of skunk properties stretching south along the river with each displaced skunk moving to the next property south until the skunk in the last property near my barn moved to the barn and the easy pickings there. 

 I might have repeated this futile exercise for a long time, but I came back from a transport to find an official park truck and a city squad car in my drive.  Apparently, park employees had noticed my activities and objected to skunks being released on park property.  The officer was polite when he told me it was against the law to transport wild animals.  One needed a license.  I said, “I didn’t know that.  I’m sorry.  The next skunk I catch, I’ll call you and you can transport it.”  He was adamant that I not do that. 

Instead, I started transporting skunks to Kiger Island.  The bridge to the island is above a branch of the Willamette with a steep trail down to the water.  I set the trap near the top of the trail, open the end facing the river below, step quickly away just in case, and the skunks race down toward the water.  That summer, I transported perhaps thirty skunks.  The entire operation takes about an hour, from finding a trapped skunk, wrapping the trap, driving to the river, releasing it, and returning home.  Once, however, road workers were repairing the bridge, so I left the skunk covered for hours in the back of the pickup in the summer sun until the workers finished.  After they left, I returned, pulled the trap out of the pickup, set it on the trail, opened the end and started to back away, but stumbled, fell on the trail by the trap.  The skunk was not happy.  He bounded down the trail, and with each bound, a cloud of spray filled the air behind it.  I thought I had escaped since the spray was not aimed at me, but when I returned home, Deb declared I had not.  She insisted I leave my clothes outside and immediately take a shower.

Other encounters also proved problematic.  One spring morning, I noticed Annie, our Cane Corso, chewing on something strange.  She readily

gave it up.  Apparently, she had made friends with an amorous skunk and had kept evidence.  The multitool is two inches long for comparison.  I am not sure what part of the animal the fur came from, but again, Deb was not having any.  She took Annie to a local farm store with bathing facilities, and with newly formulated commercial skunk removal fluid, scrubbed a happy dog.

Before Deb insisted that we get dry-mouths so she could have them inside the house, I had Neapolitan Mastiffs, a breed once raised by Romans as war dogs. Neos have large heads, powerful jaws, and drool, hence the term “wet-mouth.”  According to legend, Romans mounted padded saddles on the mastiffs, attached fire pots to the saddles, and let the dogs run under enemy elephants.  Later Italians used the dogs for bear baiting, and in more modern times chained them at gates to protect estates.  They are intelligent animals, and can be intimidating.

One summer day as I was relaxing in the yard, my Neo, Bogie, discovered that a skunk had entered his house to scarf dog food.  Bogie and the skunk faced each other for a moment.  Bogie barked.  The skunk spun around and lifted its tail to spray, but Bogie ducked and ran completely around the house. When he reached the front, the skunk had

turned back around to see what was happening.  It saw that Bogie had returned, spun again, and Bogie again raced around his house.  The third time, the skunk was slow.  Bogie grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him into the yard and shook him.  I could hear bones crunch as they were crushed.  Spray filled the yard.  When the animal stopped struggling, Bogie set him down.  Amazingly, because the way Bogie held the skunk, none of the spray got on him, but the yard stunk for days.

The area around my place has been built up: fields are filled with streets, upscale houses and condominiums, the park slough is a disc golf course, Roger Hamlin’s cornfield is soccer fields, paths through the park are paved so walkers can keep feet dry.  Lovelorn skunks no longer wander under my windows.  But the memories remain.

 

A few whales in my life

 Many people on the West Coast who live close to the ocean have experience with whales, either Grays migrating between Alaska and Mexico or Orcas that lurk in the coastal waters looking for prey, which gives them the name Killer.  My first exposure, however, came on the East Coast, where I grew up.

When I was about 7 or 8, my father’s parents took me to eat at Gage & Tollner’s in Brooklyn, which they said was the best seafood restaurant in the city.  At the time, we were staying with my grandparents in Schenectady while my father sought medical treatment for his hearing loss.  I have no idea why I was alone with my grandparents in the city, but I remember thinking Brooklyn was far from Manhattan; I remember crossing a bridge to get there, and I remember white tablecloths and complete place settings and the waiter in black coat and tie, not the kind of restaurant I ate at with my parents.  I remember perusing the many paged menu and discovering “whale.”  I don’t remember how it was listed, as steak, chopped, or stew, but I remember being excited.  When asked what I wanted, I said “whale.”  The waiter apologized and said they were out and would not have more until next week.  I don’t remember what I ordered, but the disappointment stays with me to this day.

My second missed whale came on the West Coast at the Makah reservation on the Olympic Peninsula.  As part of the 1855 Neah Bay treaty with the U.S. Government, the Makah gave up 300,000 acres of tribal land in exchange for their continued right to hunt whales,  That treaty established the Makah as the only U.S. Native American nation with a whaling right clearly specified by treaty—though the tribe stopped hunting in the 1920s when Gray whale existence was threatened by commercial whaling.  By the 1990s, the U.S. government declared the Gray whale no longer endangered, and despite objections by many groups, the Makah determined to resume one of their most important tribal traditions.  On May 17, 1999, Makah whalers in a traditional canoe harpooned a 30-foot Gray and towed it to Neah Bay.  To celebrate the successful hunt, the following weekend they held a potlatch.  Everyone who was there received some of the whale.  Deb and I, planning to hike and camp on the peninsula, arrived at the reservation the next day.  We missed the potlach and whale by one day.

We stopped at a local store to get supplies and were attracted to a display of Makah carvings.  One of the carvers happened to be arranging his contribution and I asked him about one of his masks.  He said that when the Makah harpooned a whale, one hunter jumped in the water and sewed the whale’s mouth shut to prevent the whale from filling with water and sinking.  Sometimes the whale was not yet dead and fought back.  The mask, with white skin and a red mouth, represented the spirit of drowned whalers.  Because of my interest, he offered me the mask.

We were at the reservation because when Deb was in college, she visited the excavation of an Ozette Makah village that had been covered by a mudslide about 1560CE (according to radiocarbon dating).  The excavators found more than 55,000 artifacts spanning a period of about 2,000 years; many are now on display in the Makah Museum at the Makah Cultural and Research Center. 

We hiked the Ozette Loop trail, a mostly easy nine-and-a-half-mile walk through lovely woods to the coast.  Among other sights, we found 300- to 500-year-old petroglyphs of Orcas.   

When we kayaked in the Queen Charlottes, we saw Grays.  It seemed that they wanted to stay far from us, but the Orcas were not shy.  In Johnstone Strait, two adult Orcas and a young one swam within yards of our boats, ignoring us as if we existed in a different reality.

In the first photo, a dorsal shows just beyond the bow.  I suggested to our guide that they behaved as if they didn’t know we were there.  He replied, “Oh, they knew.” 

On Sunday, June 17, 1979, forty-one sperm whales beached at the Siuslaw River’s south jetty near Florence.  It was at the time the third largest beaching known.  The next day, I drove with my daughter to see.  The beach was taped off to keep on-lookers away, but I noted that within the taped area people had strips of tape tied to their upper arms to identify them as official participants.  I found a length of tape hanging from a post, cut it, tied it on my arm, and headed toward the nearest whale.  Laurel stayed at the edge of the taped area and told herself the story she told me later that she was going to tell her mother after I was arrested and taken to jail. Even at a distance, the stench was powerful.  As I approached, the smell grew overwhelming.  One of the things no one tells about fields after a battle: Bodies swell, and explode.  For years, I could think about that scene and the smell would return.  Laurel claims she can smell it still. 

I have had encounters with whales since, but this was the most memorable.