I made camp by a wilderness lake to enjoy some solitude. Almost. I did make friends with a curious skunk who found my frypan drippings appealing.
Next evening a motorboat roared in. Three hunters unloaded their gear, made camp, guzzled beer. Finally crawled into their tent to snore.
Later I heard sneezing; the skunk was nosing among the ashes. When he headed for the newcomers’ tent, I whispered. “Wrong way, Moufette.”
His visit incited shouts, then three splashes as our reeking visitors hit the lake.
I fried extra bacon the next night. It’s nice to have friends drop in.
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perhaps the term friend is used “loosely”
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If you maintain proper respect, you can easily enough get along with a skunk. But yes, it would be “loosely.” No hugs. 🙂
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I am a lover of animals… I’d prefer to love them from afar or from photos! lol Although I heard baby skunks cannot spray you
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cute little guy, though
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They really are. This incident didn’t happen to me, but I watched a mama skunk and her babies one morning in our yard and they are cute.
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Cute friend, but sounds like the mafia! 😄
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Always pays to be at harmony with Nature, as opposed to hunting it down, weapons in hand.
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Everything in moderation. We’d be able to live in harmony with the skunk that’s dug its den under our trailer, but some other creature doesn’t. So now and then there’s a battle and we get the after-fumes — and feel definite discord with the thing!
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Sounds like you made good friends with the cute skunk. Would you not consider that, given the chance, you could have made friends with a pig too and consider him or her a friend too?
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This was someone else’s experience and I think he’d have no trouble with pigs. Actually, I read a story once about a family that got their boy, very allergic to dog & cat hair, a pet pig. Worked well until the pig got huge.
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I was obliquely alluding to the bacon… why love one and eat the other?
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I love this!
We went camping, and were the only ones there till 2 a.m. That was when some rowdy neighbors showed up on their 4x4s. I would befriend the skunk as well.
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Glad you liked it. One never knows what “wildlife” one may meet when tenting int the forest. 🙂
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What a wonderful flash, Christine. I can hear their shouts and cries, their splashes in the lake and smell that bacon sizzling. And I am no partial to the stuff. Well told. A joy to read this morning.
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Some folks, when they wake up in the night and see a skunk nosing in their tent, have enough sense to be quiet and move slow. Others panic, shriek, and leap about. Which leads to a midnight dip in the nearest body of water.
Glad you found this little tale amusing. I laughed, too, when I heard the original account.
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Since my husband and I are campers, I could easily visualize this, Christine. Great story, and those skunks are cute, but it’s good to deep the distance. 🙂
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Thank you. This is a severe condensation of an actual incident. I don’t know how the solitude lover put up with the smell, but he was glad to be rid of his beer-swilling, smutty-joke-telling clearing mates.
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