Thursday, January 03, 2008

Night-time animal conundrum

During a brief nocturnal sojourn I cross paths with an interesting animal.

Seen at a distance of about 30 feet in flash-light it looked sort of like an opposum. After it ran away into the shrubs I walked by where it had been. A distinct and pungent aroma of skunk filled the air there. And yet, that was no skunk. To add to the oddity was the way it ran off. In my 36 years of living in Oregon I've never seen skunk or opposum run away like that. I've walked up to within 5 feet of opposum before and he just hissed at me and waddled off. Don't need to explain why skunks never run off.

So what was that critter? Way too fast for skunk but smells like skunk, way to fast for opposum but looks like opposum.

Ahhh, the wonderful mysteries of night.

1 comment:

Rae Ann said...

Very curious. I wonder if it might have been a large cat that had been sprayed by a skunk. Pepe la Pue's? ;-)

by the way, your feeds are working well now