On
return home from a warm market day in the city yesterday, Gundi said she had a
touching story. The day before, an elderly skunk was wobbling around beside the
house, weaving in and out of the lawn and bushes. He or she seemed too weary to
spray and oblivious to human presence as I clapped my hands and shouted . This
afternoon our visiting skunk had chosen to come back to us to lay down and fade
away, curled up in the long grass. As
the sun was going down, he was already stiff. I carried him cradled on a pitchfork up
the hill and laid him to rest in a hollow in the wild grasses by the field of
wheat up the hill. The sun’s sinking rays bathed him in light. We figure that
coyotes or wolves will come to pick him clean in the coming days.
As
I left his resting place, a raven came to carry him over to the other side,
cawing and then wheeling off from the tall elm tree into the blue sky, just as
he did with our dear black cat Negra when she left us last September. The sinking sun cast a warm golden glow over
the wheat field. Another life passes.
