Horton is a Hoot
Sylvia Shawcross
And so it was that Moe was standing half-way down my walkway with his cellphone in hand. I like Moe. I’ve met him before. He delivers packages. He’s from Syria and he works three jobs to support his wife and child. There’s another child on the way and he smiles widely over that fact as he tells it as if a blessing had been bestowed again just that instant.
His is a smile that dazzles between the beard and moustache and it always comes with a chuckle or a laugh and sometimes a story. But not this time.
He was wild-eyed and frantic. Standing in the gloaming like a statue. Not one of those greek statues really. More modern, with cellphone and earplugs and a baseball hat and a package. But rigid like stone. Quiet as a city mouse in a Montreal apartment on a Sunday morning after the riots.
I came out because I got a text message from him saying something about help please.
You know, there always comes a time in life when you really really really realize you’re not-like-other-people. Not the painful self-consciousness of youth when you think you’re the only one with freckles on your kneecaps or that horrible one when you’re older and no one likes your tattoo or that really horrible one when you think your bathroom decor is out of fashion and that there is nothing you can do to make your sensible shoes appear elegant. (That stage where you become a snarky bitch and not too much bothers you really anymore.) ((Except maybe unnecessary wars and bureaucratic paperwork and all this ruckus about pronouns and elections and government fraud and foreign interference and global agendas and climate change and hypocrisy on every corner dressed in pearls and Merino wool.))
No…this not-like-other-people thing really hits with the utter reality of knowing that you’re on the front stoop of your hovel at dusk trying to explain to a Syrian refugee that the skunk’s name is Horton and he is a guard skunk. He lives somewhere maybe under the front stoop or maybe there in the ravine. I haven’t figured that out yet. He arrived when the 24 raccoons arrived. The ones that arrived after I started feeding one which mysteriously alarmingly multiplied into two dozen practically overnight.
Horton ate with the raccoons. He was the least of my problems. My problems started when I stopped feeding the raccoons. They can be vindictive little creatures if you offend them. But that’s not the point and is an entirely other story which I might relate one day when I can get over the trauma and the joy and can settle into forgiving myself for being an absolute idiot. A well-meant idiot I suppose is better than a malevolent idiot but that is neither here nor there.
I was trying to explain to Moe that I didn’t have 24 raccoons anymore but for some reason he was kind of preoccupied. Horton was between Moe and I with his stripes glistening with the impending moon and his splendid tail swept up in a soft finesse of fur as if he was about to do something. But I knew, and he knew that he wasn’t going to do a darn thing. He was just vain. Showing off. He does that. He knows how handsome he is in just that very light and was parading his way to the side of the house slowly for admiration.
“Look,” I said to Moe. “Don’t walk toward((s)) him. Don’t make any sudden movements. Don’t say anything.” Skunks only spray when threatened and Horton was actually very brave and nonchalant about most threats. And besides that, I knew for a fact he’d sprayed the neighbour’s dog just two days ago and it takes skunks 10 days to refuel their stinky glands. It’s not like they can call for an immediate refuelling truck or anything like those stratotankers used for the fighter pilot jets in the Middle East nightmare. I think it’s ten days to refuel a skunk. Well, I’m not sure how many sprays they can do before they run out of fuel but that’s not the point I explained to Moe—this was Horton. And Horton is mostly benign if you admire him but leave him alone.
For some reason Moe didn’t seem to be listening. He tried to smile but just left the package on the walkway and backed up all the way to his car which he swiftly leapt into so he could immediately ride off in all directions. So I looked at Horton and Horton looked at me and we both smiled. You see, Horton is a quiet guard dog. And he chases off most humans amazingly well. I never have to worry really about robbing, kidnapping, tourists or rampaging mobs.
Although… I haven’t quite researched skunks much. How many babies do they have? And is Horton a male, a female or LGBTQ2S+? How many skunks fit in a den? And what do they do when they’re bored? So… I was on Google looking up how skunks can spray 10 feet and how they hiss and stamp their feet first as a warning… I was looking this up when I realized… no one else is looking up the sex life of skunks at 7:30 on a Saturday night except for people who are just not-meant-to-be-like-other-people.
Oh I suppose I’m in for another lesson because there is no fool like an old fool repeating the same well-meaning idiot thing but I gotta tell ya, skunks really do make good guards. But that is not something anyone would believe me about, especially in polite company. Skunks just don’t come up in cocktail party conversations much, no matter how hard I do try to change this sad fact.
Just for the record, It just smells like cannabis for heavens sakes! It’s not like you hate that smell do you? Well.. some do I suppose but anyway…. I wonder if Moe is ever gonna deliver another package…. Oh well… that’s another day.
I am still trying to ascertain if he was more afraid of Horton or of me by the time I finished explaining it all….
Here’s an earworm:
Sylvia Shawcross is a writer from Canada. Visit her SubStack if you’re so inclined.
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Pepe le Pew!
What’s Horton snortin Syl?
No skunks aUStralia but there is an horrific stench coming from Canberra, our capital city.
What was the point of the anticlimax video in the end? I didn’t get it
membership in the not-like-other-people club is a very great honor and privilege! congratulations on making the cut!!!
I had an extremely disreputable stray tom cat who I suspected of spraying outside my front window one summer and pungent was faint praise for it. Eventually his indomitable character won me over and he became a resident. Perhaps his territorial marking moved to the boundary but my garden ceased to be a general cat toilet. After his demise due to a surfeit of tomcatting it returned to it’s former status as a feline convenience. The moral of this tale is that a tomcat can be as good a guard dog as a skunk.
“Orbán, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency and who has previously said he would not arrest the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who is also wanted by the ICC, called the court’s decision ‘outrageously brazen’ and ‘cynical’.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/22/hungary-invites-netanyahu-to-visit-as-world-leaders-split-over-icc-arrest-warrant
Outrageously brazen and cynical is only he himself, who doesn’t give a damn about the Gaza victims’ suffering. What is defective in Orban’s brain that he crawls almost voluptuously and “proudly” into the rectum of a Zionist mass murderer despised by the whole world? Has he allowed himself to be bribed by an “irresistible offer” and hopes to be spared from the extermination of all white Goyim through “diversity”?
“It just smells like cannabis”
Ha! Nice try but I’m not going to start smoking weed.
Who is the illustrator of that beautiful painting?
AI
See how AI supersede everything natural. AI won the battle over God and did and do it better than real life and real nature yes?
A very illustrative article.
The beginning of a new eternal life and future for the AI and Gen modified skunk “Horton” smelling “beautiful” of the perfume” cannabis who past the door of no return from Goree Island.
End of article and the old fashioned piss stinking skunk laying dead on the Highway, run over by the superior Machine Post-Human New-Imperial future.
https://vk.com/video122692823_163307556
Skunks get 5 or 6 refires before the 10-day-refresh is required. Not enough to make heavy incursions into enemy territory.
A few ‘skunk drones’ would be useful for more effective targeting, or longer-range egg odours. Room for weapons enhancement
OT
You know WW111 has begun when you look on the Daily Mail website and have to scroll down a whole page to see the headline
“WW111 has begun”
I’m waiting for “WW3 begins. Minorities most affected.”
Lol.
As the youngsters say.
Ten days to refuel. Spent 31 years dinking around in the profession and never once did the topic come up that it took that long for a skunk to refill its glands. None of the Profs in college broached the subject. Weirdly (and probably inappropriate for this audience) my girlfriend and I learned about the recharge time of my testicles in a single night. Roughly an hour but we never slept. She took it as a challenge. And I did not mind). Based on that, I think that ten days is a bit high. I have not looked it up yet in my hard cover books. But I plan to. Palmer’s Field Guide of Natural History and The Mammals of Missouri are my go tos. I occasionally find a grand kid reading one. Believe it or not, they prefer my hard copies to Google. I don’t expect them to have the information. I would love to know where you learned it.
I forgot! The skunk’s glands (they are paired) hold about 1/2 an ounce of musk each which is good for about 6 rounds. It takes about a week to produce 1/3 of an ounce of new musk. Unless the skunk goes on a crazy spraying spree, I would see it as unlikely that the skunk would ever run out of stink. If you see one, assume it is locked and loaded. This was out of my book The Wild Mammals of Missouri. Schwartz and Schwartz, University of Missouri Press. Original printing 1959.
The term to give head means the fluid from the mans brain.
any person who does dance at a eastern level understands this principles and it took
the West until recently to catch up like no wags in the hotel the night before a game.
Your only fans type challenge is considered sacrilege.
I notice you mention the smell of cannabis (a smell I detest, but it’s everywhere nowadays). Sometimes, yes, cannabis does smell like skunk. The first time I smelled it around where I live, I was actually happy – it meant there was something besides squirrels and crickets out there. But then a neighbor gave me the bad news – it was only cannabis.
Now if you can use cannabis to reduce crickets’ sex drive so they don’t chirp endlessly, I might take it up. Because the stray cat I now have, unlike the cat I once did, doesn’t seem to enjoy killing crickets (only tormenting me). Bottom line: I’ll take any real skunk I can get.
Your alternative update on #COVID19 for 2024-11-20. Pfizer jab: millions children now have irreversible & severe heart defects. Jab autopsies top cause: cardiac (blog, gab, tweet, pic1, pic2, pic3, pic4).
Cute story!
I don’t understand how people who are working three jobs decide to have another kid.
I guess for him it’s heaven, but honestly it’s hell especially if you barely make enough.
Another brilliantly written number that makes me CRITISIZE YOUR ELECTRONIC HABITS, Not only did I find out a while ago that you are using a “smart phone” but now the person in the story(which I foolishly presume is you ofc) is also using GOOGLE, to search for skunk information?
This never ends sister-Sylvia!
I introduce to you in all it’s splendour, the Eurasian badger, also a handsome beast, that likes to co habitate in dens with foxes.
It’s sad to know that most of the dogs we cherish were originally bred to kill some or another creature designated a “pest” (i.e., costing someone a few shekels). My first dog was a Miniature Schnauzer, which apparently was bred to kill badgers. Of all the things we humans pollute, we ourselves are at the top of the list.
And now it’s even been proposed to cut down all the trees in a forest and bury the wood so as to use it as a “carbon sink.”
The Schnauser at least has the advantadge of having a hansome mustache much like myself, but yes, dog inbreeding is also an extremely depressing tale, look at the other “badger killer”, the dachshound, poohr bastards are doomed to a lifetime of bavk problems too! May I suggest(not demand) that you think about the modulation of “we” Howard, because neither you nor I would cut down a bunch of trees and use it as a “carbon sink”! Nor do I think we would inbreed mammal phenotypes to “produce goofy or efficient characteristics”, I feel this is best left to plant husbandry and or bondage! The creatures that desire this form of destructive ability, almost feel like a different species to “us” sometimes, I got to admit. I hope you have a great evening,my Schnauser loving friend.
Thanks. And, yes, “we” is a tricky word – perfect in some contexts, not so good in others.
Horton – how beautiful he is! Loved your story.