Thursday, September 16, 2010

Skunky Encounters

We've had so many encounters with wildlife this month! Last night on our walk near our own property, we decided to take a newly cut trail. It was mowed about 3 feet wide and ran alongside some field fencing. Noah and Paige were ahead of me on the trail by about 20-30 feet and Noel was a few feet in front of me. Noel suddenly pounced in the long grass along the fence line. I caught up with her to see her face to face (with the fence inbetween) with a skunk. I mention "face to face" because that's an important detail when greeting skunks! Since I was now standing about 3 feet from him I turned and ran in the other direction, yelling Noel Come! over my shoulder. She followed me and we stopped so I could assess the situation (did she get sprayed?) and by some miracle the skunk had chosen not to spray her. She was play bowing to him afterall, maybe he was ready to engage in a game? Unlikely. But now we were presented with a different problem. Noel and I were together on the path the direction we had come from. The skunk was in the weeks about 15 feet away, and Noah and Paige were on the other side of the skunk about 50 feet from me. Paige had stopped to watch what was going on and I had told her to stay where she was. Noah being deaf hadn't heard the commotion and was still sniffing around farther down the trail. I had two choices at this point. Either Noel and I had to walk past the skunk to get to the other dogs, or I had to call them past the skunk to get to me. Hmmm. Well I decided the dogs were going to have to take one for the team this time, I wasn't getting sprayed. period. I called Paige first, using my happiest voice, hoping to get her to sprint past the skunk so fast that she wouldn't get sprayed. However Paige is an expert at reading my moods and she heard the tension in my voice. She trotted slowly toward me with a concerned look on her face. She stopped near where the skunk was hiding to pull out a couple of burrdock from her feathering. The tension in my voice increased. "Paige Come!" I tried to say cheerfully, while turning and running away to get her to come faster. She made it safely and I told Noel and Paige to lie down and stay. By now Noah had noticed that we had turned back. I waited until he looked at me then gave him his hand signal to come. He trotted quickly to us. We all had made it and shockingly everyone returned home smelling the same as when we'd left. Whew!

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