A Skunk is a Skunk...

...even if it is just a baby.

Yesterday, after work I went running. Down the normal trail I use while back where I'm from and when I turned the corner under a bridge, I saw something that made me skid to an immediate halt.

There, directly in the middle of the trail was a skunk.

It was like any skunk in that it was black with two light colored stripes down its back. I wouldn't say the stripes were white, like they are in cartoons, but more of a dirty yellow-ish white. It had its back arched and tail straight up in the air. My first thought was shit, "I'm going to get sprayed." The skunk then calmed down and went back to gnawing on what looked like (and I later verified to be true) a dried-up dead frog.

Then, I realized that this was just a baby skunk. Small, very small, I would say only six inches including its tail. I turned off my ipod and looked around. I wasn't worried about the baby anymore, no not at all, I was worried about the baby's mommy. Surely something this young would still be attached to its mother. So, I scanned the nearby brush but couldn't see anything. I thought I could hear some movement in some dense bushes near the bridge, but I couldn't see anything and definitely didn't want to go looking, especially if that movement was the mom hiding from me. I hear tomato juice is the only way to get rid of skunk stink, but I wasn't willing to test that old wives's tale.

I tossed some sticks at the baby to try and scare it off the trail, but they didn't seem to phase it one bit. Eventually, the baby skunk started wobbling away farther under the bridge. It finally made its way to the side of a hill that led directly down into a creek.

I will be honest in admitting that for a second, all I wanted to do was kick the skunk into the creek to see what would happen.

Instead, I decided to watch it. I crept past the skunk to the other side of the bridge. Some man rode by on his bike and I pointed out the skunk to him. He just said "wow" and continued on his way. After the man was gone, the baby skunk crawled back onto the trail. I could faintly hear it squeaking. Its squeak isn't like a normal squeak, it's deeper or raspier somehow.

I scraped my foot along the loose sand on the trail thinking to scare it and the baby instead started wobbling towards the sound I was making.

At first, I thought the damn thing was attacking me so I panicked, and jumped away. But then I realized that it was actually following me. Or, more specifically, following the sound I was making. Clearly the baby skunk had no idea that it was following a human, something it should be trying to avoid or spraying at.

So, I played with it for a bit. Leading it on little trips around and under the bridge multiple times. It just kept on squeaking and shuffling after me the entire time. Sometimes it would speed up until it was within a certain distance of me and then just follow along, but only if I kept scraping my shoes along the trail. I am assuming that its eyesight is pretty poor when it's young and that its most important senses are its abilities to hear and smell.

Eventually, I realized that I couldn't keep doing this. I knew that I couldn't keep the skunk, because after all, a skunk is a skunk, even if it is just a baby. So, I stopped making my scraping noise and the baby skunk just stopped behind me and kept squeaking and turning around in circles.

My heart hurt when I realized I was abandoning it. This little baby skunk was helpless out here. People walk this trail all the time with their dogs, one of them could easily attack it. I've even seen cats on this trail before, one even right at this same bridge. But there was nothing I could do, a skunk is a skunk, even if it is a baby.

The only thing I could think of was to hide it. So I led it into the brush near the creek and crept away. I kept moving down the trail while watching this little bundle of fur move deeper into the greenery until I was around the corner and the baby skunk, the dead frog, the bridge, and the creek were all out of my direct line of sight.

I don't know the significance of this ending, but it felt right to include it for some reason: When I couldn't see the baby skunk anymore, I ran. I ran all the way back to the parking lot and my truck and I drove home.