Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

 

The smell of spring was in the air.

It was the essence of skunk.

Odors trigger memories. A scientist tried to explain the reason to me. He used big words, but I think he said the parts of the brain that handle smells and memories are intertwined.

The fetid aroma brought a recollection of when I was hunkered down before being hunkered down became a thing. Years ago, a group of us went to the Platte River in central Nebraska on my March birthday to watch the sandhill crane migration. We were crammed into an ancient bunker near Alda waiting for the cranes to lift like smoke from the river. A community can mean many things. We were a community of crane anticipators.

It was cold. Not that cold, but close. It was darker than the inside of a pants pocket. I silently repeated, “This is the best day of my life.”

I’d learned Tom Brokaw was part of our group. Yes, that Tom Brokaw — then the anchor of NBC Nightly News. He was in the company of schoolmates from Yankton (South Dakota) High School. My wife thought it was him and I was sure it wasn’t. She was sure I was wrong and she was right.

We needed to be quiet so as not to disturb the cranes. The comfortable silence allowed me to hear shuffling/snuffling sounds. It didn’t sound like one of Brokaw’s classmates sleeping while standing, a skill that might have been learned at Yankton High. The day hadn’t flipped its light switch on yet. I used my binoculars as the day brightened. I detected movement on the ground. As the day made things clearer, I saw the shuffler/snuffler was a skunk. Yosemite Sam would have called it a varmint or polecat. The skunk appeared unwilling to practice proper social distancing. It walked toward our bunker. Skunks are useful and necessary, but this skunk was neither of those things where it was. It wasn’t an ideal situation. There were skunk-sized holes in the bunker that would allow the skunk to waltz right in. Our crude castle was under siege. Code Red!

As other human eyes found the skunk, a hush fell over a hushed crowd. We didn’t just watch the skunk; we aggressively watched the skunk. Seeing the skunk concentrated minds. We didn’t want to take a face-to-face meeting with a skunk. There are no atheists in a bunker with a skunk.

Skunks have poor eyesight, but they refuse to wear eyeglasses. They forage mostly by nose and ear. A coyote shadowing the skunk drew closer. Skunks often give warnings before spraying by stomping their feet and arching their backs. This skunk did just that. If the coyote got it, we all got it.

It was frightfully familiar. I’d contributed to the delinquency of skunks before. The problem with a skunk is that it smells like a skunk. I’d been sprayed. When it comes to that experience, less is more and least is best. The experience stinks and is much worse than having a colonoscopy. I was a boy wizard crawling under a truck in pursuit of a skunk the first time. “Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” I called out smartly. As a teen, I was sprayed while freeing a skunk from an outhouse. Another collision with skunk spray occurred when helping a friend liberate one from a trap. Even wearing one of those smelly, tree-shaped air fresheners didn’t help me after I’d been sprayed. I wish the theme song of Laurel and Hardy (“The Dance of the Cuckoos”) would play as a warning whenever I’m about to do something stupid. Skunks have an odor that most people consider offensive and might be why the term “P.U.” was coined. Avoiding interactions with skunks hasn’t become part of my belief system. My sister asked how many bad encounters I needed to have with skunks before I became wary. Twenty-eight was my guess. There’s only one rule when dealing with skunks. A skunk is always right.

The coyote left and the skunk calmed, but inched nearer. Not everyone was a walking camera then, so we had time to think. Is 10 feet the distance a skunk can spray? How do you get a skunk out of a bunker?

There were no signs reading: “No U-turn.” I hoped the skunk would execute one. The skunk, for reasons known only to it, did just that and waddled off. I wasn’t unhappy to see it go.

Each year, I celebrate the day Pepe Le Pew didn’t spray Tom Brokaw.

Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday.