Watched by Wild Animals

by Enos A. Mills

The skunk had been attending to his own affairs. But after being struck by one cone and threatened with others, I suppose he thought it time to defend himself. He looked all around, and with stiffly turned neck was trying to see into the tree-tops when another cone came pattering down on the other side of him. This frightened him and at best speed he started in a run out of the grove. Just as he was well into action another squirrel cut off a cone and this bounded and struck near the skunk. He passed me doing his best, and I am sure at record speed for a skunk.

The skunk is ever prepared. So ready is he that bears, lions, or wolves rarely attempt to spring a surprise. I ever tried not to surprise one, but one day a skunk surprised me.

I was edging carefully along a steep, grassy mountainside that was slippery with two or three inches of wet snow. But with all my care both feet suddenly lost traction at once. Out I shot over the slippery slope. As I went I swerved slightly and grabbed for a small bush. A second before landing I saw a skunk behind that bush; he at that instant saw me. The bush came out by the roots and down slid bush, skunk, and myself.

I expected every second that the skunk would attend strictly to business. In the sliding and tumbling I rolled completely over him. But as there was “nothing doing” he must have been too agitated or too busy to go into action.

At just what age the fighting apparatus of a young skunk functions there is no safe way of judging. If an enemy or an intruder appear near a young skunk before his defensive machinery has developed the youngster strikes an impressive attitude, puts up a black-plumed tail, and runs an effective bluff.

I came upon a black bear, who had guessed wrong, just a few minutes after he had charged a pair of young skunks. His tracks showed that he had paused to look at them and do a little thinking before he charged. He had advanced, stopped, stood behind a rock pile and debated the matter. The skunks were young—but just how young? Perhaps he had tasted delicious young skunk, and possibly he had not yet taken a skunk seriously. When I came up he was rubbing his face against a log and had already taken a dive in the brook.

A fox came into the scene where I was watching an entire skunk family. In his extravagantly rich robe he was handsome as he stood in the shadow close to a young skunk. Without seeing the mother, he leaped to seize the youngster. But he swerved in the air as he met the old skunk’s acid test. Regardless of his thousand-dollar fur, he rolled, thrashed, and tumbled about in the bushes and in the mud flat by a brook.

A little girl came running toward a house with her arms full of something and calling, “See what cunning kittens I found.” She leaped merrily among the guests on the porch, let go her apron, and out dropped half-a-dozen young skunks.