A Birthday story for my twins.

We once had some skunks under the playhouse, an eastern barn like structure which was a left over from our youngest daughters' childhood. We didn't know skunks were living there until one night, in the moonlight, I saw something strange hanging from one of the boards along a short fence that ran along our raised bed. It was sort of swinging a little bit. At this point, I could only tell it was partly black.

At dawn I went outside and got a little closer look. The tiniest skunk I'd ever seen was hanging there by one back leg. I went to get a paper grocery sack and cautiously approached. The little ball of fluff was tired and just hung forlornly by his trapped leg. It was caught between two boards, and that held him fast. Since it was almost morning, I could now see well enough to get a good hold on him so that he didn't sink some razor sharp teeth into my hand. He was grinning at me, I held his skin so tightly. We were both terrified! I was hanging onto his whole back with one hand and trying to figure out what to do next. Happily for me, I'd also gotten a good grip on the base of his tail. In my ignorance of all things skunkly, I didn't know that he couldn't spray me if his tail was down and not UP. It was purely luck that time.

We appraised one another, me, thinking he couldn't possibly be all alone in his night foraging, and he, desperately tired from his ordeal. He just relaxed a little. I looked at his leg. It was fine so I dropped him into the sack and called my friend Wilma, the skunk lady of Project Wildlife. "Just bring him on over," she said.

Once at Wilma's house, the twins and I learned the finer arts of skunk capture, because, as Wilma pointed out, where there is a baby, there is a mother. It turned out to be true. Mother was under the playhouse, as quiet as a mouse, with her younger sister and their combined brood of 11 more little ones. We found this out later when we started watching the place with a will!

Up to this time we had assumed that the skunks we saw fighting it out under the elms where outsiders who just came in under the fence. We would chase them all out, slam the gate, and dust off our hands. But, the next night we cornered another baby, and off to Wilma's he went the next morning. By this time we knew where more were, because about three others were spotted running under the playhouse.

Wilma told me to get them out by spraying water under the place of hiding and catching skunks one by one and dropping them into a line of waiting bags. They give up once they are inside bags. Happily this turned out to be true. What we didn't know is how many of them there were.

I started with the hose, and floated the backyard with tremendous amounts of water but no skunks. More water, no skunks. More water, and suddenly we had skunks everywhere!

Three of us were working this mother lode of skunks. I would catch one, the twins would hold the bags, and I would drop it in. The drill is that the skunk is grabbed, the tail swung up and into the bag goes the critter with it's tail clamped to it's body. I had my big leather welder's gauntlets on, and we got most of them into several bags. Soon it was Eleven down, including the mothers, and Two still running around like the really pissed off little skunks they were. I caught number 12.

I had been ignoring a constant pleading from R, one of the twins, to please. PLEASE let her catch one. I figured well, she has seen it done so why not. She's a big girl. She can do this last one. I handed her my gloves, and she dashed off after the last of zig zagging baby. I was right behind her with the open bag and her sister was standing close by, too. R reached down, got the correct grip on the sodden, exhausted little brute, and swung him up. She did not secure the tail.

He let it all go! S and I watched in horror, like viewing a slow motion film, as the arch of yellow stuff hung in the air for a nanno second before striking us in the hair and face. R, as surprised as we were, did not drop her skunk. I have to give her credit for that bit of cool.

We delivered the skunks to Wilma, who was expecting only about three more. Wilma kindly told us what to buy for our next week of shampoos and skin washings, and R got the "honor" of going into our local Savon and buying the Super CD, a product which I can whole heartedly recommend to you as an antiodorant. Though she didn't smell like a rose, R was the one who smelled the best of all three of us, and knew not to complain about getting the duty.

Soon, an expectant mother Possum had moved in, and we evicted her with her darling, beady eyed brood of ten clinging to her back. All of them went into One Box and the stench from Mother's ultimate weapon was really not that bad at all. These creatures went to the Possum lady, Sally. It was only a few weeks after that that we raised the barn. Four pylons and some leveling made it the perfect home for our new rescue duck, Jemima. All this on a suburban lot. It doesn't get much better than that, as they say.