As with most politically-charged issues, I don’t usually share my opinion, I hardly have one, at least not one that I can defend with any sense of superiority.  I know what I think and feel, but I also know that everyone thinks their way of thinking is right, or more morally correct, or more evolved.  I know that what we read in the papers is too subjective to quote it as fact, and even if it were, there are billions of facts that we are not privy to.  So I eschew such conversations for the most part and just try to live a good life.

This brings me to the subject of hunting.  I live in a neighborhood where there are so many deer and wild turkeys that I understand the concept of culling.  Even among the most environmentally sensitive of my neighbors, the jokes fly fast and furious around Thanksgiving time re: the turkeys and pretty much anytime of the year re: the deer.  It would be nice if we could go back to days of such small human population that we wouldn’t have to worry about wildlife corridors and the like.  However, like all living beings we are driven to procreate so I certainly don’t know when it will all end. 

I don’t have any big gripes against people who like to hunt.  Some of my best friends are hunters.  However, I just don’t get it.    I have never been tempted to hunt, although I enjoy a little target practice now and again at the range.  (I’m good at it, don’t mess with me :-))Last night clinched that lack of understanding in my brain.

Al and I were just setting up a backgammon game on the bed, at about 10:30 p.m.   We had let Ed the Dog outside for one last go round.  In an aside BOHU moment, I remember thinking “Al, if Ed gets into it with a skunk, he’s all yours, dude.”  Al had let him out and was taking his sweet time letting him in, ignoring the barking and general mayhem that ensues when Ed is having a nervous breakdown due to animals making scratching noises in the leaves from all directions.  I hate it when I have those moments of premonition, and I definitely did not mean for it to really happen.  I had just settled in under the covers, ready to have my butt kicked by Al in backgammon (he later won all four games) when I heard Al shout out “NO!  OH NO!”  

Not only had Ed gotten sprayed by the skunk, but he had killed it, and deposited it outside our bedroom sliding glass door.  I didn’t know he had it in him.  Skunks are so slow, which is why I think Ed prevailed in the end.  Anyone who has a dog knows that fast action is required when your dog has been sprayed.  I had previously given up on various skunk smell tips and now I just plunge him into a bathtub and use an entire bottle of doggie shampoo.  Last night was different though, there was another smell, the smell of death, of blood. 

I put Ed in the bathtub and started to run water to fill the tub.  It quickly turned a disgusting brownish color and the odor forced me to turn away and take ten deep breaths to stop myself from vomiting.  There was nothing to do but keep moving on this project.  Al could hardly contain himself, and I had him running around looking for the skylight pole to open it and every other window in the house.   I washed Ed four times, emptying and filling the tub each time.  His collar was unsalvageable, he will be rewarded for his violence with a new collar later today.

As for the hunting, all I could think of was: is this what is experienced right after a kill?  I know the skunk smell is overwhelming, but it was not that – I have smelled that before, many times. When it is on your dog, it is not the rather heady lemony smell of roadkill, but a burned motor oil smell.  Odd.   Last night it was the fresh blood, the hormones of fear and death that nauseated me.   I washed off tiny pieces of skunk flesh, still the color of life.  I couldn’t help but wonder how one dresses a fresh kill on the hunting field without feeling sick to one’s stomach and very, very sad. 

I eat meat.  I know that one of the great discrepancies of modern life is that we do not see our meat being slaughtered.  I have not been able to clean fish as unemotionally as I used to when I was a kid.  The blood and guts get to me now, the fish gasping for air and its eye looking at me as if to say “why?”  I can’t imagine dressing a freshly killed deer who, although they eat my roses, never fail to awe me with their beauty. I felt terrible about the little skunkeroo.  I hoped it was not a mommy skunk, little babies somewhere lost and hungry now.  I was irritated with Ed, although he looked quite confounded himself and foamed at the mouth for quite some time trying to get the ick out of his mouth.  Obviously I am way too sensitive for the hunting scene, but I wonder how anyone can NOT be that sensitive.  I am sure it is a learned skill.  I have had no problem with wound care in my career, I guess it’s sort of the same.

As I write, the skunk odor is still wafting through the property.  It takes about a week to fully dissipate – we learned that when our vehicle got skunked for some reason.  You wonder if it will ever leave and then on day seven it is no more.  I am hoping, truly, that it isn’t on me, and I’m not entirely sure it isn’t – I was the dog washer, after all. 

As I look out my writing room window, I sit at mid-tree level.  I am witnessing a common and delightful scene – two tiny squirrels chasing each other at top speed around and up and down the tree trunk.  They will stop for awhile – at the moment they have been stopped for at least a minute, not moving a muscle,  unable to see each other, chattering away, then one will make a move and off they’ll be again, running in circles after each other. 

Last night a skunk got into Ed’s space, and Ed did what came naturally, unfortunately. This morning, life goes on, squirrels play, little baby skunklets are either surviving or not, the deer are passing through (get away from the rosebush, dude) but with the passing of just one little skunk last night, I am indeed melancholy…