Saturday, July 08, 2006

Some form of Snow White

I drove home from Ann Arbor Sunday night, having spent a signifigant chunk of the evening parked in front of a friend's TV grappling hairy beasts and jamming swords into them. And debating, the whole time: I can barely afford to pay rent with this ridiculous new job. Can I really afford to buy Shadow of the Collosus?

Eventually I decided that just mooching off the purchases of others would have to suffice for now, and back I went to my apartment. I pulled in to a parking space conveniently outside my doorstep (unusual at two in the morning), and saw that there was a skunk in the lawn right outside the front steps, dragging a College Inn pizza box around.

On the one hand, it was freaking adorable. Skunks are cute little critters, and someone told me once that they make fine pets, once your have their scent glands taken out. They're small and they're frisky and their tails are poofy and snuggleable. Warner Brothers didn't have a huge challenge in making Pepe le Pew a charming character (though in these days, his persistance would be deemed stalking and possibly sexual assault).

On the other hand, adorable thought it may be, I'm not fond of skunk-reek, and I didn't want it to be all over my clothes. The skunk was happily nibbling a hole into the box he was dragging around, and seemed to be ignoring me, but what would happen when I approached the stairs?

I had two options: I could drive to another parking spot, then go around the building to the back door, or I could just be a jerk and interfere with nature's beautiful cycle of scavenging.

I picked up an empty soda can from my car, hid behind the door, and threw it in the skunk's direction. It jumped in the air, and then scrambled into the hole it had chewed in the pizza box.

At first I thought my vision had failed me, and I turned my headlights back on. Not seeing anything new, I flipped them back off, and walked up the pathway onto the front stairs, watching the pizza box as I went.

Sure enough, as soon as I was safely hiding behind the stairway, the skunk poked its head out of the hole, looked around briefly, and started pulling itself out. It then turned around, pulled a crust out from behind it, and dashed off around the other side of the building. I continued onward, smelling like deodorant, rather than musk, and went to bed.

In other news: After a four month wait, I finally had that appointment with a dermatologist. Lady says that I look pretty much skin cancer free, but that I have a flat mole in my hair I'll have to have someone else check on if I'm ever getting my hair braided. Crazy stuff.