Petunia's first adoptive family.

 For those of you who have not met my newest little angel, this is Petunia. She is just three months old now, although we brought her in from under the garage about a month ago. She was living under there with a family of skunks--as skunks and cats are kissing cousins in a way--they really tolerate each other in a very convivial way.  

I was sure that the skunks had moved on long ago. I rarely see.That is until I went outside to take pictures of the Super Moon eclipse a while back. I went out into the dark with my camera and started taking photos, leaning on the pea trellis to steady the camera as I snapped. In short time my husband came out to join me.

Then he heard a noise, a rustling of the hosta leaves under the sunporch. We had just taken Petunia into our house a short while before so we anticipated that this may be another relative who also had been abandoned/orphaned. I turned my camera toward the sound by the rain barrels and pushed down the button to focus, knowing that it would produce a dim light that would illuminate whatever it was without causing too much of a fuss. 

Whoa. What a surprise. Walking along the pallet beneath the rain barrels not five feet away was a very large skunk in all its fluffy black glory with two thinnish white stripes on this side of its back that ultimately converged on its tail. Lovely beast. It looked a lot like my Frankie, but shorter, and with the white stripes, but just as large. Now Frankie is a good 12-15 pounds these days and his fur is 4-6 inches long so you get the picture. 

I focused a couple more times so I could appreciate this magnificent creature's beauty some more, but did not actually snap a picture so as not to scare the poor beastie with the flash and the noise. We decided that indoors was a better place for us while he was out for his nightly foraging. He--I say he like I actually know, and I don't--scurried off into the hostas towards its den, and we took our cue and went swiftly but quietly into the house. 

Now I had, on occasion, seen skunk scat about the gardens, but not in gross proliferation. We never smell them. My husband says they like us because of our critter-friendly yard. We give them a safe place and in turn they eat our grubs and slugs and all manner of not garden-healthy vermin. 

Now we know for those two weeks we were feeding Petunia before we snatched her up and brought her indoors, that--despite being apparently orphaned or abandoned by her original family--she had been adopted by these, our resident skunks.They shared their home with her and never caused her harm or fear. I love skunks!