Friday Flashback-On Sunday!

I have been meaning to post this "Friday Flashback" for some time and I just keep forgetting to do it ON Friday.

So I thought, hey, this is MY damn blog and I can post a "Friday" post any day I want. So there.

So here is this week's "Friday Flashback" and I would have titled it something like "Close Encounters" or "An Encounter in the Night" something really, really clever like that. So pretend that I did, 'k? 'K.

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The main story here is a short one, but I wanted to give you a little background on the "subject" of the actual story. So here it is:

Several years ago we were living in a small town in a quiet neighborhood. One day an adult female cat wandered up and we started feeding her. She just stayed. We named her Ginger. We built her a little house and she lived in the yard. She would come and go, but she didn't stay gone long. She knew that our house was home.

It wasn't long before we realized she was pregnant. She was a WONDERFUL mother. She was just a WONDERFUL cat. Very loving & sweet, she was just the best cat ever. Just to give you a little bit of an idea of just how great she was, she even took a kitten that wasn't hers and fed it and took care of it as if it were her own. (My mother had a barn cat that abandoned one of her newborn kittens; Ginger's kittens were about 3 weeks old at the time, so we just took the newborn and gave it to her and she became its mother. It never mattered to her. I think she would have taken in puppies, bunnies, anything. She was just that kind of an animal).

She is gone now and we miss her, but we gave her a good life and happy home. At least we did our best.

One night, it was around 10 pm and it was DARK in the backyard when I went out on the back porch. I saw Ginger in the middle of the yard, her eyes were reflecting in one of the street lights and she was just sitting there staring at me.

"Hey, Baby", I called out to her.

She didn't move.

"What's wrong? Are you okay?" I was worried that maybe a car had hit her or something and she was injured and couldn't or wouldn't move. I knew instinctively that she wasn't acting "right" and I was worried.

I slowly left the porch and made my way to her, stepping softly, talking gently to her the entire time. If she was injured she might be scared and run and then we wouldn't be able to help her.

She just stood there as I walked up to her.

When I got to her I reached down to touch her, and that is when I saw it. The WHITE STRIPE down "Ginger's" back.

The skunk just stood there it's eyes glittering in the street light. It must have been surprised too that a human would get so close. Either that or it was scared. It never moved. I am so very thankful for that.

I very, very, very slowly stood up straight, very, very, very slowly turned around, and very, very, very slowly walked back to the porch. When I got to the porch, I very, very, very quickly opened the door and bolted into the house. My heart was pounding.

I couldn't believe that I had nearly petted a skunk. Can you imagine how I would have smelled if it had sprayed me??? Oh. My. God. And what if it would have bitten me?

Rat Man STILL after all these years loves to tell that story, and he just thinks it is WILDLY knee-slappingly funny.

Nowadays if I walk out of the house at night to take the dog out and even SMELL a skunk, I hightail it back into the house.

The dog can just pee in the floor for all I care. I'll march her into Rat Man's "room" (where all his Harley Davidson stuff lives) and tell her to pee right there. Then I'll make Rat Man clean it up! That would be wildly, knee-slappingly funny for ME!




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