I am NOT a morning person. I have a pretty set routine in the morning that I stumble through on auto-pilot most of the time. Things this morning were going smoothly until I grabbed my coffee and went out to the porch to feed the miscellaneous farm cats and smoke. I live in the country so there are 4-5 cats who like to hang out on my porch. Earlier this summer a family of skunks moved in under my house. A mom and three babies. So I've been feeding them too.

So it's 6:45AM, still dark. As soon as I step out on the porch I'm met by Purr Boy, the youngest farm cat who begins to purr loudly as soon as he sees me. I pet him for a minute, put some food in their dish and sit down to have a cigarette. The chairs on the porch are right next to where the cats food and water is. So there I am, waking up slowly and I hear this scritchy-scritchy-scritchy sound next to the porch. Skunk noise, okay so one of the skunks is coming to join us. Up the ramp to the porch comes the most skittish of the skunks-mostly white in color and only comes up to eat when it's dark.

Skunks have poor eyesight, about 3 feet in daylight and much less than that in the dark. Skunk trots up onto the porch, completely oblivious to the me or Purr Boy being on the porch. Skunk gets about 6 inches from Purr Boy, sticks his tail straight up in the, puffs it all out and jumps back and forth. Purr Boy jumps, backs away from the skunk and then jumps on the other porch chair. So Purr Boy is eating up there, Skunk seems to have forgotten about him. Skunk still does not seem to have noticed that I'm on porch even though he's sitting down eating so close to me that his tail is tickling my leg. I'm beginning to wonder how I'm going to get up and back into the house without upsetting the Skunk too much, especially since his business end is facing me.

I have arthritis and standing up is not something I can do slowly, I just have to do it. I sit a bit more, imagining myself explaining to my boss that I'm late because one of the Skunks cornered me on the porch or that I can't come in because the Skunk got me. Finally the Skunk works his way around to the other side of the bowl. He's still given no indication that he knows I'm there. I figure here's my chance and I stand up. The chair creaks, my knee brace creaks and there's movement. Here comes the Skunk, tail straight up in the air and bouncing backwards. Not good. I step sideways away from him. The Skunk bounces back and forth and then continues jumping toward me backwards. I back up some more, keeping an eye on the Skunk and how close I am to the front door. I keep moving slowly. The Skunk stops bouncing toward me although he still has his tail up and is aimed at me. I stand as still as I can. The Skunks tail drops a bit. I reach behind myself, grab the screen door handle and open the door. The door groans, the Skunks tail shoots back up. I open the inside door. Here comes the Skunk. I back inside, trying not to wear my coffee. Whew!

Way too much for that early in the morning........

Copyright © Raven Tompkins
October 21, 2000