Skunk

My grandmother sent me this postcard when I was about four years old. At this age, I wanted a pet skunk. While other kids wanted dogs, cats, gerbils, guinea pigs, or hamsters, I wanted an animal with a reputation of being repugnant.

I remember what made me think that having a skunk would be a wonderful pet. I had a early reader type book on raising wild animals. Somewhere, in my parents' house, the book is tucked away on a bookshelf in all of its seventies-era paperback glory. If memory serves, it showed a picture of a young boy in a flannel shirt holding a baby bottle to a pet skunk. The defensive glands having been safely removed to prevent any mishaps in spraying.

While wild animal husbandry was ultimately not the life for me, I kept this postcard tacked to a cork board in my bedroom all through childhood. My grandmother passed away before I turned six, so I really didn't get to know her. Just the little message that she wrote to me about my grandfather smelling a skunk when he was driving back from the hunting cabin. 

Kind of stinks, but the damned thing is cute...isn't it?