My mother Dorothea Hope Smith was a saint. Here I could wax poetic and “count the ways” in which she earned the title, but the one that would probably prevail in your mind is the fact that she let her middle daughter—me—have so many pets, tame, exotic and wild even though her childhood and adulthood were plagued by unsettling and unhappy encounters with critters.

Here are just a few examples: Mom was chased and attacked by domestic geese as a youngster, dive-bombed by bats as a silver-haired elder, and bitten (twice) by Deaken, my serval son. In fact, Mom is the only person Deaken ever bit (except me, once, and that was my fault: my vet was giving him a shot that stung and told me to “hold his head tight” and I didn’t, so he swung around to bite the offending needle and bit me instead. He immediately tucked his head and collapsed onto the floor in the most abject display of “Sorry!” I ever saw.). But she was the first to proclaim, both times, “My fault!” (She was right about that, too.). Then she said, both times, “So I still love my ‘grandson’!”

I could go on and on about the many times Mom and critters did not click as I did so easily with almost every animal I ever met, but you get the idea. Wherever she went, she never knew if the critters she crossed paths with were going to be friend or foe. So she was conflicted when it came to animals. Despite this, she could see, while I was at a very early age, that I wasn’t. She marveled at my wondrous ability to interact with animals, tame and wild (remember those butterflies and birds that landed on me?)…

So it perhaps should have come as no surprise the day I brought home a de-scented skunk kitten. We were living in Cle Elum at the time. I have no recollection as to how I acquired Fancy but, since she came de-scented, a good guess is that our veterinarian let us know some were available.

Skunk in tow, I pondered how to house her. I looked around. The guinea pig enclosures we’d built to house them didn’t seem right and there was darned little material with which to build another enclosure. So I studied the terrain, indoors and out, for a likely spot to raise Fancy.

When I spotted it, I lit up. I just wasn’t sure Mom and Dad would agree to my “perfect solution.”

It was April or May. Two rooms in our home—the living room and another similar-size family room—were connected by a large stone fireplace, contained on both sides by movable glass doors. Voila! What a great place to raise Fancy, I thought.

So I presented my case. Mom listened, mute. Apparently I was quite persuasive. She just had a couple of comments:

“Fancy stinks.”

I countered, “That isn’t stink. That’s musk. People buy it to put on their bodies.”

She said, “I think they do something to it to make it smell better first, though.”

She had me there.  So I said, “I promise to bathe her every few days. As long as I do that regularly, she’ll smell fine.”

Her next comment was, “When fall arrives, and we need the fireplace again, you’ll need to have another solution for her.”

“Super! I agree! Yes!”

With those two objections out of the way, I tackled the large fireplace space (it measured a good three feet by six feet) after reading up about what Fancy’s habitat would look like in the wild.

She was very happy. Litter box trained—although she backed in and upward when she went in a corner, as mustelids are wont to do, so she usually missed the litter box and ended up pooping on the cemented fireplace walls above it—she was gentle, polite, and sweet. She put up with curious family dogs and cats and never felt threatened so I never saw her do the “skunk aim-and-fire” routine that so delights YouTube watchers.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZwlKANA43w (Since Fancy was de-scented, she didn’t have the guns—anal nodules--to actually spray anyone, anyway…)

Fancy was a terrific pet.

My English teacher, Mrs. Rossetti, often fed skunk kits and their parent at her cabin. Although they were fully-loaded, wild animals, they never threatened to spray her; they knew she was their feeder and that she wasn’t going to hurt them. She said they behaved very much like domestic cats. I agree.

Warnings: skunks can carry rabies. Permits are required to own skunks in most, if not all, states in the U.S. Be sure to read up on them so you don’t lose your heart to a critter that can be confiscated if you come by it illegally or lack the proper permission to have one.