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posable clothing — old raincoat, tweed cap, trousers. My Wellington boots were made of rubber and washable, and probably could be salvaged if w orse came to worst.
I filled up the old woodchuck hole that the skunk had used to prevent its return, and I went to the cage with a long-handled shovel.
The book was right. The skunk was quite friendly if you spoke to it gently and stayed your distance. It sniffed its nose up and down and looked at me through the mesh of the cage. I continued to speak to it, and after a while it curled up as if to take a nap. Quite natural, I suppose, for a night creature in the middle of the afternoon.
My plan was to turn the cage over with the shovel, let the trap door fall open, and allow the skunk to run off into the ravine beyond the trees. Approaching from the end of the trap where the metal door had dropped closed, I would be shielded from attack. Anyw’ay, I could watch for the telltale, skunk-threat rituals described in the book, and back off if necessary.
I tipped the cage over with the long-handled shovel, and the skunk was free. But this one hadn’t read the book. It didn’t go through the warning ritual. Looking me straight in the eye, it wiggled the rear end, pointed an ejector mechanism like the barrel of a gun at me, and —Zap! — five green raindrops splattered on my coat. Julia knew that disaster had struck, for the pungency was carried to her on the breeze a hundred yards away.
Skunks are not fast runners. With nose forward, tail straight back and all feet thrashing, this specimen could only go at human walking pace. It headed off down the hill, and I walked behind with the shovel, directing it left and right, away from the garden, deep down
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