Striped Coat, the Skunk

by Joseph Wharton Lippincott

Along the path it ambled until another animal about the same size but gray in color appeared from the opposite direction. Then the little black and white one slowed down to a walk until the other, a ’possum, had passed, but it might have been noted that it was the ’possum which moved out of the path. When, a little further on, a larger animal, Gray Fox, came trotting through the shadows and not seeing the black and white one, nearly bumped into it, the haste with which Gray Fox leaped aside to make the way clear was almost comical. Since both Possum and Gray Fox felt such respect for the little black and white animal it was very evident that there was something most important or formidable about it.

This same feeling was even shared by two big does who with their young fawns close at heel were walking to the creek to drink. With snorts of surprise and of warning to their tender charges, they stood in the path for an instant, at bay, the young ones peeping with wide spread ears from behind their flanks. But the black and white animal, acknowledging the right of every woods mother to protect her young, stopped just long enough to allow the deer to see who it was and gracefully to step out of the way. Then on it ambled.

Two old coons shuffled out of the path without any hesitation, so did the mate of Gray Fox—all feared to come to close quarters with a full grown wood pussy; but a mother mink who was hungry and in a bad temper anyway, halted directly in the center of the wood pussy’s trail and curled back her lips in an evil snarl which showed every tooth in her head.

The skunk, taken by surprise, slowed down to a walk, her long fur bristling just a little and her bright, beady little eyes and sharp nose trying their best to search out some reason for this menace. She had often passed the slim-bodied mink at a distance, and knew her well as one of the woods creatures that belonged in that part of the wood. Surely the mink recognized her.

With bushy tail raised well over her back and every muscle ready to meet an attack the skunk sidled cautiously forward. She was not afraid, but she was good natured and hated a fuss. Nearer she came, then suddenly stamped a front foot so fiercely and with such a show of anger that the mink instinctively drew back. Past her then grandly sailed the skunk in the very center of the path, all fluffed up like a ship under full sail. If she saw the furious gleam in the mink’s eyes she did not show it, but went on about her business as unconcernedly as before.

It was to be sure, the custom among the little wild things not to interfere with anyone in the woods unless he was a playmate or unless he looked good to eat. The little gnawing tribe of grass and nut eaters, the mice, the squirrels, the rabbits and their kind nearly always looked like a good meal to meat eaters such as the fox, skunk, mink, owl, ’possum, ’coon and cat. Therefore the little nut and grass eaters always had to be careful to keep entirely out of the way of the killers; otherwise they were seen no more. But a mink would not care to eat an old skunk unless starvation stared him in the face, nor would he go outside of the mink family in search of a playmate.

These, however, were strange, exciting days for the woods folk. It was spring time and nearly all of them were hunting mates or, like the mother mink, taking care of families of hungry little ones. Only the wood pussy seemed all alone and unhurried as she travelled steadily through the moonlight.

Before very long, the path she followed ended in a fenced clearing. This was new to her, so she proceeded cautiously, with many stops to test the night air through her keen nose. Strange things had happened since she had been there before. Trees had been cut down and dragged into heaps; a house and a barn had been built; and worst of all for the wood pussy, the hollow stump for which she had headed so confidently all this time, was uprooted and gone from its old place. Now she too grew worried and ran this way and that hunting for this cozy, safe den which, during the Spring before, had been her home.

Well she remembered where it had stood, among beds of sweet fern and blackberry bushes, now all plowed under or, if their ends did stick up from the furrows, reeking with the smell of man and of his constant companion the dog.

As the poor wood pussy looked about, a new fear swept through her. It was growing light in the East; soon the shadows would be gone and she would be caught without a den far from the woodchuck burrow from which, early in the night, she had made this journey with such assurance.