The Skunk and the Fur Coat

When I was a young boy, I grew up on a farm in central Illinois. My dad was always bringing home animals or people were dropping them off because...well we lived on a farm. He was always bringing home dogs. Dogs were his favorite, but we also had goats, Guinea fouls (birds that roosted in trees and made noise), Shetland ponies and even a pet raccoon. I think the strangest animal though had to be the baby skunk that someone left with us.

The baby skunk was very tame and we could hand feed it. I seem to recall my dad saying that only adult skunks spray and only when they feel threatened, therefore we should not worry about the little fellow. We kept the skunk in a cardboard box until one day the little guy made a break for it and joined his pals in the wild...or so we thought.

We lived in a 100-year-old farmhouse. It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. There were not a lot of closets for the upstairs bedrooms so I had to put some of my clothes in the small closet downstairs in the living room under the old staircase. Dad and I had our suits in that closet. The foundation of the farmhouse had a low crawlspace with one opening, a piece of circular drain tile, just big enough for critters the size of a cat. That was good because we had plenty of farm cats that kept our rats and mice to a minimum.

Okay, so why am I talking about suits in the closet of this old farmhouse and what about the escaped skunk? Well, you see, one Saturday night, after we all went to bed, one of those farm cats had a run in with...you guessed it... a skunk that decided to take up residence under the house. Our little skunk had not gone far from home.

By Sunday morning, the house reeked of skunk. It was especially bad at the center of the house right under the closet in the living room. Mom ran around opening widows, but it was too late, the damage had been done. Our suits had soaked up the wonderful aroma wafting up through the floorboards of the old house.

That Sunday, Dad had promised to take me to church for some reason (a rarity by the way, now that I think about it) and so we put on our suits (yes, we actually wore suits to church in those days) and headed off to town. The smell did not seem so bad once we were in the car driving a few miles down the road...with the windows open.

Dad and I got to church late with all the excitement back at home. The service had already started so we slipped into the pews at the very back of the church. Fortunately, they were empty so no one would be sitting next to us. Unfortunately, Joe Whaley and his wife were seated in the pew right in front of us. They were neighbors who lived just a mile up the road from our farm. Now, Joe was a short, little old man with a shiny, baldhead. His wife was a rather large woman with a brand new fur coat that Joe had proudly purchased for her. She was in her glory before God and the rest of the congregation that day. Sadly, Dad and I became the “fly in her ointment” that morning.

As the service droned on, we noticed Joe’s wife sniffing the air with disdain. She began sniffing her new coat, then she sniffed the air again. Finally, she poked her poor husband and made him smell her fur coat. Joe just shrugged and she poked him again, harder this time. This sniffing and poking went on through the rest of the service. Dad and I made a hasty exit, the first chance we got and headed back home.

I always felt bad about ducking out and not telling the old man and his wife that it was us and not the fur coat, but then I guess it was God’s way of teaching about pride in material things. Who were we to question the ways of the Lord?

Food for THOUGHT...