On the way home from Frances’s school last Monday–a walk which is by the way all of five minutes and 1 1/2 blocks long–she stopped, suddenly. “Mummy, look!”
I looked, and saw four baby skunks gamboling on the neighbour’s lawn, composed of equal parts grass and clover.
Four cuter little fluffballs you never have seen. Each was the size of a small kitten, fluffy black and white fur bristling out all over, scampering and digging in the dirt. Smaller than squirrels, cuter than chipmunks. Who knew?
According to the Hinterland Who’s Who, skunks are normally born in March or April, so these little guys might be as much as two months old–the typical time for weaning. Where was Mum? No idea. We didn’t see a peep of her.
We saw one particularly tiny baby skunk whose fur was mostly black, with a white tip on his bushy black tail. “The runts are always the cutest,” said Frances, and I had to agree. For the fifteen or twenty minutes we sat and admired them, other neighbours joined and left as well, taking their own pictures and reminiscing about the baby skunks they’d known and loved as pets. It’s one of the things we love about Dundas: not only are we surrounded by natural areas and not only does wildlife commonly live in the town, but most of the people are there because they also value these things. Everyone wanted to stop and love the baby skunks.
Frances, of course, wanted to adopt one.
At the same time, though, I wondered how this would have been seen here, even a hundred years ago, these little baby skunks on the lawn. I have to think it would have been a much more common sight. Imagine, a hundred years ago, flocks of birds that covered the sky, vast forests, wildlife everywhere of every kind and description–would they have noticed our baby skunks, and if they had, would they have stopped and stared? Would have sat down to watch them? Would it have been even remotely remarkable?
How much have we lost?
Zoopolis 
Ah well, we’ve gained the ability to blog about our thoughts and finds.
Out west, the girls had a family of skunks living by the entrance to their apartment building.
They probably hauled out the shotgun and did for them, or at least that’s what my grandfather always did. Otherwise, no eggs. I would guess that 100 years ago the people who lived in towns kept hens. And maybe a milch cow. And the cute little babies grow up into big stinkers.
Mary, I think you just proved my point. 🙂