Monk The Skunk . . .
In the jungles of suburbia, it's never a good idea to be wandering around after dark. Here, amidst the bungalows and the back-splits, between the garbage cans and the recycling bins, all kinds of "wild" animals have claimed the night as their own.
Since spring arrived to the neighbourhood, I've been visited by one such beast. I call him Monk — Monk the Skunk — who waddles by early in the morning just as I'm wandering around outside and watching the sun rise. Where he goes on his nightly forages, well, God only knows. I imagine that he's having a relationship with a buxomly Sussette Oo-La-La Skunkette, somewhere a couple of blocks over, where it's wooded and more private.
If this is a case of love, then I applaud his commitment to his passion, which seems to run with clockwork precision. Every morning, Monk hurries past me at almost the exact, same minute. Every morning, he scurries, oh so casually by, without so much as a sideways glance my way. I don't mind. To me, that seems to be how it should be. Monk the Skunk one way, Kennedy the other way. I don't like the musky scent of his cologne, and he doesn't like the smell of my Ocean Breeze Cocoa Butter Shower Gel. I don't make threatening gestures at him, and he doesn't line me up with his rear-end, super-soaker spray glands. So far, it's been a working relationship. Until this morning.
This morning, instead of tumbling along his usual route by the side of the house, Monk the Skunk was standing perfectly still at the end of the driveway. When I saw him, I knew right away that something was different. Instead of wiggling his way up the driveway, he remained motionless down by the street. I could tell that he was waiting and watching for me with his beady black eyes. This sudden change in our daily ritual caught me off guard. I stopped dead in my tracks. I knew trouble was brewing.
"Let's move along there, partner," I called to him as casually as I could. "You're running late."
Monk's head titled, first one way and then the other. He seemed to be surprised that I had the ability to speak, and he cackled back at me. Although I had never heard Skunkenese before, Monk's tone clearly revealed that he was edgy, maybe a little tired, and definitely unhappy to see me. More cackle followed, interspersed some unsavoury sounding crackle, and if the Webster's Skunk Dictionary (Abridged Ed.) includes swear words, then I'm sure Monk added every one of those very fragrant expletives in his sudden diatribe directed solely at me.
"Tough night?" I ventured. "Hey, we all have them." Then, in my most matter-of-fact voice, I added, "Now let's clear the sidewalk before the kids start marching off to school."
Monk the Skunk shook his head, and the violence of that tremor rippled, like an earthquake, down the length of his body and out his tail into the morning air. Then, without any warning, he became a cruise missile with a racing stripe down each side as he suddenly charged up the driveway in a straight line towards me.
I had nowhere to turn. My only escape from this heat-seeking ball of potpourri-gone-wild was to jump back into the house and slam the door in his face. Apparently, I did so without a second to spare, because just as the door closed, I heard him thump into it with the force of a SWAT team pile driver. I peeked through the side window, and there he was, just outside the front doorway, where he sniffed the air for the scent of Cocoa Butter and spun in erratic circles. I shuddered.
"Rabies, the bugger has rabies," I thought, and I tried my best to see if his mouth was dripping with the rich foam of a British beer, but noticed, instead, only the glint of his razor-like yellow teeth. My mind whirled in parabolas. I was being held hostage by a rabid skunk. Worse still, I knew that within minutes the neighbourhood would explode with life. "I need to call 9-1-1," I said to myself, convinced that before the morning ended, Monk the Skunk would bite and infect some innocent passerby — the octogenarian from down the block on her morning stroll, the mailman, the paperboy, a straight-A student momentarily stoned on Ritalin, maybe, even, the whole lot of them. I couldn't allow Monk to become a serial rabist.
Then, I saw what had flung Monk into such a frenzy. Out from under the neighbour's rusty-white Toyota Camry bustled a diminutive lady skunk, my imagined Sussette Oo-La-La Skunkette, and three small skunk toddlers. Under the watchful eyes of Monk, they made their way up the drive, past the house, and out to the ravine beyond the back fence.
I smiled. I laughed. I went to the front door and pulled it open. I had the insane notion that I might congratulate this fledgling father of three, maybe even share a bottle of bubbly wine and a non-Cuban cigar with him. After all, I was happy for him. I was overcome with the eternal kinship of fatherhood with my little rodent friend. I was transported back to the warm fuzzy memory of witnessing the miracle of birth without so much as once calling for an epidural to calm myself and block out some of the screaming. I was empowered by that ecstatic feeling of immortality that all new fathers experience.
Apparently, Monk didn't share my sense of such a strong ethereal connection. As he turned away from my front door, he left me with a much different scentiment.
 |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment