There was a rustle of wings in the air, and something flew in through the open door and landed on top of my head. I felt claws pricking through my fur.
“Ree-ree,” a voice croaked. “Ree-ree.”
It was my friend Casey! Crows can talk better than dogs, but not as well as people. “Ree-ree” was his way of saying “Lily.” Or maybe it was his way of saying “Hello.” Or “We should have chicken treats.” I am a dog and have too many things going on to try to learn how to understand bird. But I was very happy, and I wagged.
Casey sometimes likes to take rides on my head, so I circled the skunk’s crate. Then I went back to the crate door.
The skunk had stirred from her corner. She had come over to the door, and was crouching down low to see what was happening.
Probably she had never seen a crow ride on a dog’s head before. A lot of people—and animals, too—are interested when Casey and I do this.
I sat down. Casey stayed on my head. He leaned forward a bit to peer at the skunk. The skunk peered back.
I hoped the skunk was starting to understand that living at Work would be fun. She would get to play with Casey. She would get to play with me. She could nap with Brewster.
“Look, Mom,” Maggie Rose said softly. “Lily’s doing her job, and Casey’s helping!”
“You’re right,” Mom said, just as softly. “I’ve never seen a wild animal calm down so quickly. Sometimes when animals are frightened, seeing something completely unexpected takes their mind off what’s scaring them. Like a bird on a dog’s head!”
Mom picked up the skunk, and I followed her as she took the little crate inside a kennel. Kennels have a cement floor, a bed to lie on, and dishes full of food.
Mom left me with the skunk crate in the kennel, shutting the gate behind her. What were we doing now?
Casey had flown off my head by then, but he flapped over to the kennel and gripped the wires with both feet so he could gaze down at the skunk. He was as interested as I was.
“Keep an eye on them, Maggie Rose,” Mom said. “Don’t open the crate, though. Just because that skunk can’t spray you doesn’t mean she can’t bite you.”
I sat down beside the crate. Being inside the kennel made me remember my early days, when I had lived in a kennel like this with my mother and my three brothers. That was before I went Home to live with Maggie Rose.
I guessed that the skunk would do the same thing. She would live here in the kennel for a while, and then she’d go Home with us. We’d both eat out of our bowls in the kitchen, and sleep pressed against Maggie Rose’s legs in her bed.
“Stinkerbelle,” Maggie Rose said to Dad later. “I’m going to name the skunk Stinkerbelle.”
“That’s a good name,” Dad said with a smile.
“If Stinkerbelle can’t live in the wild, what are we going to do with her?”
“I don’t know, Maggie Rose. I just don’t know.”
11
Every day at Work, Maggie Rose would let me into the skunk’s kennel. My girl called the skunk Stinkerbelle, so I knew that was the skunk’s name. People always know names, even before the animals themselves do. I didn’t know I was Lily until Maggie Rose told me.
Inside the kennel was the skunk’s crate. The door was open. Stinkerbelle seemed curious about me, but not enough to come out right away. Sometimes she sniffed out the open door, watching me. Casey was often in the kennel, too.
She finally crept out of her small crate one morning. Eyeing me carefully, she waddled over to her bowl and poked her nose into it. There were a lot of different things in that bowl—some soft meat, pieces of broccoli, and chunks of apple. I didn’t like the apples or the broccoli, and I didn’t see what Stinkerbelle saw in them, but Casey seemed to enjoy them. He would sometimes take one and peck at it until it was gone.
I treated Stinkerbelle as I would a very scared kitten, and just let her become used to me being there. She seemed afraid of me, but was always very interested in Casey. And Casey was always interested in the skunk. Maybe they liked each other because they were each a deep, glossy black, with shiny black eyes.
Friends play with each other a lot, and different friends play different games. With other dogs I might play Get-the-Ball-First or Steal-the-Stick. Cats were pretty good at Chase-Me. Sometimes we played Wrestling.
Casey and I played Sit-on-Lily’s-Head a lot.
The skunk, though? I tried bringing a ball into the kennel with me, but she was unimpressed. I shook Craig’s old socks, and she just stared at me, amazed. I tried to picture the skunk playing Sit-on-Lily’s-Head, but it didn’t seem likely.
It did seem that the more time I spent with Stinkerbelle, the more comfortable she became. Eventually she forgot she was afraid and would sniff me all over, and sniff all over the kennel, and even went up to Casey to sniff.
Casey didn’t sniff back. Crows just don’t seem to be interested in that sort of thing.
Then Stinkerbelle curled up on her bed, so I curled up with her. I thought Maggie Rose should let Brewster in to sleep with us.
“I have good news,” Dad said at breakfast one morning. I was crouched by Bryan’s chair, because Bryan is the most likely to drop a piece of food on the floor. I like Bryan very much at mealtimes.
“You’re going to let me have that electric skateboard?” Craig guessed.
“Of course not,” Dad replied. Craig’s legs kicked a little under the table.
“We’re going to build a swimming pool?” Bryan suggested.
“A what?” Dad sputtered. Mom started laughing.
“Jason’s parents are putting in a pool,” Bryan pointed out.
“Everyone, stop talking,” Dad said.
“Does it have to do with animals?” Maggie Rose asked. Bryan dropped a piece of toast and I pounced.
“Yes!”
“With the skunk?” my girl guessed.
“Right again, Maggie Rose!” Dad replied.
“We’re getting an electric skateboard for the skunk?” Craig asked, sounding surprised.
Dad groaned.
“The skunk’s getting a swimming pool?” Bryan demanded.
Now everyone was laughing.
“No. Thanks for the great ideas, but we’re taking the skunk to the wildlife sanctuary,” Dad went on. “Want to come, Maggie Rose? Lily too, of course. Your mom said Lily and the skunk have really bonded.”
“They have,” Mom affirmed.
Maggie Rose nodded. Then she looked around the table.
“Can Craig and Bryan come, too?” she asked.
Dad raised his eyebrows.
“Nice of you to think of the boys, Maggie Rose,” he said. “Isn’t it, you two? Do you guys want to come?”
“Sure,” Craig said. “You did good helping to save it, Maggie Rose.” Under the table, I saw his toe nudge Bryan’s foot. “Hey Bryan, didn’t Maggie Rose do a good job with the skunk?”
“Yeah,” Bryan muttered.
“It was Lily who found the skunk,” Maggie Rose said. “She’s really the one who saved it.”
A bit of scrambled egg slipped off Bryan’s fork and hit the floor. I jumped on it. Mine!
After breakfast was over, we all went for a car ride. All meaning all of us! We climbed into the big car that can hold our whole family. Mom and Dad sat in the front. Craig and Bryan had the two middle seats. And Maggie Rose and I had the back seat to ourselves.
The first stop on the car ride was to Work. The whole family didn’t often go to Work together. I pranced in with my tail wagging hard, excited to be with my family and my animal friends at the same time. Brewster, who always stays at Work, came stiffly out of his kennel with his tail wagging and sniffed at Craig and Bryan. Maggie Rose dropped down on her knees to give him a hug.
Casey croaked “Ree-ree,” from the top of a stack of crates that held a mother cat and her three new kittens. The kittens were too young to come out and play yet, and the mother hissed at Casey, so Dad shooed him off the crates. Casey flew over Bryan�
��s head (Bryan ducked) and perched on a bookshelf on the other side of the room.
Mom brought Stinkerbelle out in the crate. I went up and stuck my nose through the wire.
The skunk was huddled in a corner, and she seemed unhappy. But when she saw me, she jumped to her feet and waddled over to touch her nose to mine.
“Lily really is amazing,” Mom said. “I’m glad she’s here. This will be much less stressful for the skunk with a friend nearby.”
I heard wings overhead, and Casey swooped down to perch on the skunk’s crate.
“Say goodbye to Stinkerbelle, Casey,” Maggie Rose said.
Bryan snorted. “Stinkerbelle? Seriously?”
The skunk lifted her nose toward the roof of her crate. Casey lowered his beak and peered in at her.
“Look, they’re really saying goodbye!” Maggie Rose exclaimed. Bryan rolled his eyes.
Dad picked up the skunk’s crate and carried it to the car. He put it on the floor of the back seat where Maggie Rose and I were sitting. I could tell that the skunk was scared when the big car started to move, so I hopped down to be close to her.
I sat near the crate and leaned against the wire, so that the skunk could feel my fur. She leaned against me from the other side, and I knew that it made her feel safer.
Another car ride! I wondered where we were going now. Were we going to see more squirrels get sucked into a hose?
I hoped not. I didn’t think my skunk friend would enjoy that at all.
12
When the car stopped moving, Maggie Rose put on my leash and took me out. We were in a parking lot with lots of cars and trucks, but the scents filling my nose were not metal and oil and gas. They were animals. Many animals, and they were very near.
Not dogs, though. I was the only dog.
There were squirrels, of course. (There seem to be squirrels everywhere.) And people. I could definitely smell people. Deer, too—that was a smell I knew.
But the other smells—I couldn’t identify them. I’d encountered some of them before, though. When Maggie Rose and Dad and I had been sleeping in the little cloth house, I’d smelled some of these odors in the woods. They’d been rubbed on the trees or were drifting on the air.
Animals. Big ones and little ones.
“Wait until you see this place,” Dad said as we walked across the parking lot. “They have thousands of acres, and they have huge enclosures for all the animals they protect. They’ve got bears, lions, tigers.…”
“Tigers!” said Bryan. “I want to see the tigers.”
“We will, after we drop off the skunk.”
“Why do they have tigers, though?” asked Maggie Rose. “Did they bring them from India or China?”
“No, they’re not a zoo. That’s why I like this place so much,” Dad explained. “They take in animals that can’t live in the wild for some reason, or ones that have been kept as pets or in shows.”
“Nobody should keep animals like that!” Maggie Rose said angrily.
“You’re right,” Dad agreed. “Nobody should keep wild animals as pets at all. Those animals can’t always be released back into the wild—they never learned to hunt. So they come here.”
“That’s like Stinkerbelle,” Maggie Rose said. “She can’t live in the wild.…”
“So she can live here,” Dad finished. He looked down at my skunk friend in her crate. “Welcome home, Stinkerbelle.”
We walked in through a big gate, and Dad shook hands with a man who had hair underneath his nose and who smelled like coffee and ham and mustard. He lived with two different dogs. I could tell when I sniffed his shoes.
“Oh,” said the man, looking down at me. “We don’t usually allow dogs.”
“Lily has a job to do,” Maggie Rose said firmly. I wagged to hear my name, and wondered if we were going to play soon. “She helps Stinkerbelle stay calm.”
The man looked surprised. Mom nodded. “My daughter’s right.”
“Fair enough.” Nose-Hair Man led us along hard paths set into the dirt. There were fences on either side, and on either side of the wire were big stretches of grass.
Something was sleeping behind and alongside one of the fences, in a sunny spot. It looked like a huge pile of brown fur. Was it a dog? It was bigger than any dog I’d ever seen. And it didn’t smell doglike.
It smelled … big. And male. And interesting! I pulled on the leash, trying to tug Maggie Rose toward the heap of fur.
“No, Lily—you can’t sniff a bear!” she said, pulling me back.
I whined with frustration. The heap of fur made a snorting sound and rolled over, stretched four paws, and collapsed back into sleep again.
“That’s Winston,” said Nose-Hair Man. “He likes nothing better than a nap in a sunny spot. And here’s the home we’ve made for your skunk!”
He stopped by a little house and pointed proudly.
The house had three wooden sides, and a fourth side made of wire like the fences. The wire side had a small open door in it, and enclosing the entire house was a big dog kennel with a roof. But there wasn’t a dog in it, and my nose told me there never had been. I would be the first!
“She’ll be safe in here,” the man said. “The wire roof will keep off any flying predators—there are hawks and owls around.”
“Let’s put her crate in and open it up,” Mom suggested.
I watched alertly as Nose-Hair Man opened up the gate of the kennel, because my nose had picked up the scent of chicken treats, and I am very interested in chicken. Mom put Stinkerbelle’s crate inside and slipped open its door. Then she came out, and the man shut and latched the kennel gate.
We watched. The skunk did not stir.
“She’s scared,” Maggie Rose said softly.
“She’s right to be cautious in a new environment,” said Dad.
“We haven’t fed her yet this morning, so she’ll probably come out to get some food,” Mom told my girl.
“We put some berries and vegetables and a little bit of cooked chicken in her tray, inside the house,” Nose-Hair Man said. My ears perked up when he said “chicken.”
Mom nodded. “A nice balanced meal.”
We watched some more. Nothing happened. I yawned, not understanding any of this.
“This is boring,” Bryan complained. “Hey, look, goats! Can we pet them?”
Nose-Hair Man nodded. “That’s the petting area.”
“Go ahead. Craig, will you go with him?” Mom said. “Maggie Rose, how about you? Don’t you want to see the goats?”
My girl nodded. “But I want to make sure Stinkerbelle’s okay first,” she explained.
“That’s my game warden girl,” Dad said.
The boys left. I watched them go, and looked up at my girl to see what was happening now. Was I the only one who knew about the chicken?
It seemed that we were all still watching my skunk friend. But she wasn’t doing much. Was she taking a nap inside her crate?
If we were supposed to play with the skunk, I would have to be let inside. And if that’s what everyone wanted, maybe I’d get some chicken out of it.
I went to the kennel gate and pawed at it. I looked up at Maggie Rose.
13
“Lily should go into the cage with Stinkerbelle!” Maggie Rose exclaimed. I heard my name and figured she was talking about letting me play with my friend. I licked her knee to show her that I loved how she always understood what I needed.
“Well, I don’t know.…” Nose-Hair Man replied doubtfully.
“They’re friends,” my girl told him.
“See, now that the skunk is here, the critter’s safety is my responsibility. If I put a dog in there and something happens, I get in a lot of trouble.”
“Lily is something of an ambassador at our rescue,” Mom explained. “She greets almost every animal who stays with us. It’s amazing how she helps them calm down. She’s been inside a kennel with the skunk every day. My daughter is right—Lily probably will help the skunk fee
l at home here.”
“It’s against the rules,” the man said, his nose hair twitching.
I was getting impatient. I barked and Stinkerbelle reacted by sticking her face out of her crate and gazing at me. Nearly all animals wish they could bark like a dog.
“See? She wants Lily to help her feel better!”
“It doesn’t look like the food is luring the skunk out, but she’s okay with the dog,” Dad observed reasonably.
“She gets hungry enough, she’ll come out,” Nose-Hair drawled.
“But that’s not right,” Maggie Rose argued. “Then she’ll be scared and hungry.”
The man scratched at the hair under his nose, and I found myself sitting and itching at my ear in response. “You do make yourself a good point there, young lady.” He sighed. “Well, I guess it’s worth a shot.” The man unlatched the gate and I trotted inside.
I looked around with interest. There was a hollow log along the back, and over in the little house I could smell a bowl full of food—the chicken!—and another with water.
I stuck my head into the crate. There was Stinkerbelle, who had backed up and was crouched low to the ground, not moving.
I wagged at her so that she’d know this was a safe place to be. She lifted her head. I wagged some more.
Then I turned around to check out the bowls in the little house.
After a moment, I heard a very soft rustling behind me. Stinkerbelle was following. When I stuck my head in the open doorway to the little house, she brushed right past me and put her nose next to mine in the food bowl.
“Well, I’ll be,” Nose-Hair Man said softly.
I made room for her. She took up a piece of apple and crunched it. She could have the apples. That was fine with me. I was more interested in the pieces of chicken. I snapped them up and then lapped at a drink.
Lily to the Rescue: The Not-So-Stinky Skunk Page 4