A Camping Encounter

Our family didn’t do a lot of camping, but we had some friends who spent most weekends  in the woods during the summer and they often invited us to join them.

This time we joined them up in northern Alberta, near Lac la Biche. It was a warm summer evening. We set up our little red seven-by-seven tent at a campsite next to theirs. After getting it all up we barbequed some chicken legs.

It was almost dark by the time we put everything away and walked over to our neighbour’s site for stories and beer. It was pitch dark by the time we turned in. I slept in the middle, my wife, Ruth, to my right, and our seven-year-old daughter Jennifer to my left. At her head slept our feisty little schnauzer, Bertha.

Now, I had been warned that this was bear country and that we needed to put all our table scraps in the garbage bins. Obviously, I forgot. I was awakened well before sunrise to rustling and shuffling nearby. I turned on my big flashlight and shone it toward the table, but all I got was a big white triangle of nylon mesh. I zipped it open and again pointed to the table from which the sound was coming.

Yikes! A family of skunks, squabbling over the remains of our chicken. Mother skunk was very busy pacing around the table while her family of three or four snarled their warning to their siblings to let go of their piece of chicken.

I woke up my wife to inform her that we were under siege, grabbed Bertha and told Ruth to shove her down into her sleeping bag.

“What do we do now?” she whispered.

“Nothing much to do but to wait and be quiet. Just make sure that Bertha doesn’t get out, or we will have hell to pay.”

I had visions of trying to clean up after being sprayed by a skunk. We would likely have to burn the tent, and we had nothing along to do any clean-up job. Every once in a while mother skunk paid a visit close to the tent. She walked around it once or twice. Each time I held my breath, fearing the worst.

After what seemed an hour or more, the sun decided it was time to get the day started, allowing me to see more and more of what was going on. The little skunks finally left the bag. The mother lit into it to get the last few scraps.

Then she decided to check out the tent. She came right up and looked straight at me, her beady little eyes darting from side to side. She stopped about a meter away. I got my pillow ready to shield my face when and if she decided to turn around and give me a jolt of her perfume. She decided not to do that. Maybe she was just there to say thanks for the good meal. She gathered up her brood and went on to her next adventure, leaving me heaving a great sigh of relief. I waited a few more moments and opened the tent flap. “What are you doing. You can’t go out there, can you?” Ruth sounded frantic.

“”Oh, it’s all right. I know a thing or two about skunks. They will not use their weaponry unless they are threatened. They don’t like using it any more than we like to be sprayed. I will move slowly. Mama skunk will tell me which way not to go. She will just let go a little whiff that tells me to stop. And I will go the other way.”

And that is what happened. I could follow her meandering progress to a wood pile and beyond, and then I returned to clean up something I should have taken care of last night. And to thank my lucky stars that it wasn’t a bear sniffing out our site. Lesson learned.