“Wild animals” is today’s stream of consciousness prompt from Linda.
I live in a small, rural town. I live about a quarter of a mile from ‘the outskirts”. The entire town is maybe two miles square.
Our wild animals consist mostly of squirrels, occasional snakes, stay-all-year-long and migratory birds, red foxes, and skunks. During particularly dry years, which the norm rather than the exception, a prairie dog wanders in looking for water.
For 27-ish of the 30 years I’ve lived in this town, the skunk population was such that we should have had a byline to go with the name: Springfield – Skunk Capital of the West.
So. Many. Skunks.
The overabundant skunk population seemed to come to a saturation point during the spring and summer of 2019. Since then, smelling or seeing skunks several times a day went to hardly once a month.
That does not hurt my feelings in the least little bit, and here’s why.
I have two pet doors on my back step: a large one for my dogs and a small one for my cats.
I close the dog door at night, but the cat door stays open for my cats to come and go freely. Back in the spring and summer of 2019, I had a an outside ramp leading up to the cat door, because there were kittens that needed the climbing boost. I also have a fenced yard, which does not impede a skunk’s determination to come into the yard to dig holes in the grass looking for insects, worms, and other tasty skunk treats.
Therein lies my skunk tale.
The evening a skunk and I met, and rapidly parted ways, on my back step, I decided to put in a security camera to see activity at the pet doors.
From March through October of 2019, I didn’t sleep soundly. I set the alarm on the security camera to go off at the slightest motion, so I’d have a fighting chance to race like a mad woman to the cat door before a skunk made it all the way into the house.
For whatever reason(s), by the spring of 2020 when skunks start coming out of quasi-hybernation, they didn’t, and they haven’t.
I’ve slept much better ever since.
Until next time,
Kaye Spencer
writing through history one romance upon a time