Skunk!

So, I was obviously pretty happy about seeing the red fox at Coyote Hills the day I both did and didn’t see the burrowing owl, and the fox photos are my favorite from that day, however, what was maybe even more exciting than the fox (because I have seen a lot of foxes in the wild and gotten lots of photos of them), was running into a SKUNK! Skunks are one of my all-time favorite animals. (I realize I say that nearly all animals are my “all-time favorite” animals – I’m enthusiastic, what can I say.) They are one of the species I intend to rehab at home one day. In fact, I’m hoping and hoping and hoping that a litter of orphaned baby skunks ends up at Sulphur Creek (where I am a “mammal mom”, meaning I take baby mammals home to raise until they are big enough to move to an outdoor enclosure) one day when I’m there and I end up getting to take them home for a while. Anyway, we had skunks living in our yard in Virginia, so I have actually seen wild skunks before and even gotten photos – much better photos than these – but until this day at Coyote Hills I had never run across a skunk while hiking before. So I was really happy to encounter this guy.