The Scent-sational Skunk and the Universe in a Drainage Ditch

The DitchI am angry. Beneath the anger is a grief I haven’t yet let myself feel, but the anger came first and it hasn’t left.A neighbour has set out poison in the ditch where a skunk lives.Consider the facts. His property is large, and the ditch lies at its far edge, well away from his house. He never walks there. His car sits nowhere near it. He has no dogs, no cats, nothing that might blunder into a skunk and come home reeking. And the skunk rarely sprays; more on why later. The animal asked nothing of him but to be left alone in a corner of land he does not use.I have tried to find a reason for what he did.Fear, perhaps? Southern Ontario lived with rabies for decades, and that fear has outlasted the facts behind it.Or habit? The old rural reflex that treats every wild thing near a house as vermin.Or plain indifference?I can name these, but I can’t forgive them. He didn’t have to understand the skunk. He only had to leave it alone, and he chose poison instead.Frankly, my thoughts…