Wednesday, 7/19

The skunks are back.

Those of you who’ve been reading these ramblings since the days of the dinosaurs may remember that when Loraine and I moved into our current apartment we discovered two things—that drunk college students can make a lot of noise, and that, for some strange reasons, skunks seem to like our tightly packed little urban neighborhood. Every so often we get a spell when they seem to have a need to let everyone know they're around.

Kind of like they have the past few weeks.

Several nights ago I awoke around 3 am, and for a second wasn't sure I was awake. After getting up, going over to an open window, and inhaling, I then knew WHY I was awake. Needless to say, the windows were shut quickly, but the stench lingered in the air waaaaay too long to get back to sleep. I don’t know where the skunk was, or if it emptied its entire, uhm, bomb bay, but that smell was strong, and it wasn’t going away. Thankfully, by the next morning, it had disappeared, but in the few days since it's happened again. I guess the one good thing about the current cold snap is that our windows were closed and the smell didn't penetrate too far into our apartment, but it was still strong enough o wake me up.

I have no idea why (or how) skunks like our neighborhood. Like I said before, it’s a very tightly packed urban neighborhood; the houses are right next to each other, there aren’t a lot of big yards or trees, and there’s more concrete than grass & dirt. If I had to pick out one section of Marquette where I would guess skunks wouldn’t like to go it’d be ours. But apparently there’s something magical in our little section of the city, and it keeps drawing those wonders of nature back time and time again.

Aren’t we lucky?

I have no idea if this was a one-time incident, or if some kind of skunk real estate agent is telling the little creatures that our neighborhood is the new “must move into” neighborhood for hip skunks. I’m certainly hoping it’s the former; after all, I don’t want to have to deal with this on a nightly basis. You can shut noisy college students out with earplugs. I have yet to figure out anything that keeps the smell of skunk out of your nose.

Yum. Or yuck, depending up on your point of view.

(jim@wmqt.com)