Essays

Wild On The Prairie: Mammals

The Long Drought and a family of skunks
October 28, 2001

The momma made it to the shade of the large-pad prickly pear before she died. Her four babies collapsed next to her and slept most of the day. As the sunset made the mesquite trunks glow pink they woke up. The first to stand was a little bowlegged male who wobbled a tiny bit before straightening his spine and curling his tail. He prodded the mother for ten minutes, but got no reaction. A tiny bleating sound squeaked out of him as he turned to his siblings. He nudged them, and they opened their eyes, but they did not stand up to play.

The little male began exploring. Next to the cactus was a stand of what Llaneros call river cane. He slipped among the tall stalks, the dead leaf-blades from years past rustling as he gingerly made his way. After a few minutes, he tripped on a trumpet vine sucker, and as he fell he heard a clump clump clump. He lay still, being very quiet. Big human feet stepped right beside him, but he did not move even when the foot caught part of the vine and pulled it hard against his spine. In a minute, moisture began falling, and he stuck his tongue out, drinking in each sip as it ran off his nose.

After a few minutes when he had drunk his fill and started to feel a chill, he returned to his siblings. Again he prodded them, and they each smelled the water and began licking it from his fur. After his fur was dry, the sisters stood and followed him back to the misting sprinkler in Gone Native’s propagation area. All drank more and more, until their little tummies swelled taut. The sprinkler's moisture trickled down through the cotton-hull flooring and woke up pill-bugs, earwigs, and snails.

The invertebrates half-swam up out of the drenched mulch, and when they did, all the little babies began sniffing at the movement. In only a few days they would have been weaned, and their mother would have shown them that the invertebrates were food. None of the many-leggeds smelled like mother's milk. Not even the little male opened his mouth to try to chew on one.

The four little babies wandered in the lath house for several hours, occasionally returning to nudge their dead mother. The sprinklers quit near midnight, and all four wandered in the area until they found the reflecting pool. The tiniest female climbed in, and lay on the slab of slate that angled into the water. She opened her mouth to drink, but a bit of Chara algae caught on her teeth, so she curled on her side, sucking the wet vegetation. The others crawled under the rocks at one end of the pool and fell asleep.

In the morning a human came out of the house and reached down between the rocks to turn on another sprinkler. My fingers grazed coarse hair and when I focused on what I was touching, I realized that four little baby skunks were within a foot of my hand.

"Whoa!" I yelped.

Deborah, 50 feet away and surveying the Circle Garden, recognized the surprise in my voice and began moving my way as I slowly backed up. We met on the other side of the walkway. "What did you see? What happened?"

The little male crawled from between the rocks and stood facing us. We could tell he probably could not focus well. "A little baby, too young for its eyes to be working. AAAAAh! He is so so cute!" Deborah noticed the one curled on its side in the pool. "Is that one dead? It is not moving."

The little male scampered off to the northeast, towards its dead mother – who we would not find for another week. When we saw the other two babies under the rock, Deborah moved slowly over and carefully lifted the rock. She was immediately presented with two baby skunk buttocks, tail lifted. "Oooooooh -- hey, I am not getting sprayed. This is funny. Look at them, such fierce little creatures." She moved the rock to the ground, and the two skunks circled in place.

Deborah looked at the one sprawled on the rock. "This one is still breathing." She carefully touched it, but it did not react. "Oh, no, this one is dying. What are we going to do?" She headed for the house, and in a few minutes returned with an open can of tuna, a heavy glove and a box. She picked up the dying skunk and carried it in the direction where the male disappeared. She dabbed tuna liquid on the skunk's lips, but no reaction.

She came back and surveyed the other two, still circling around the faucet. She picked them up and placed them in the box and carried them over to the other. They tottered off under the agarita and ephedra tangle on the other side of the lath house walls.

"Where is their mother?" She asked.

"Possibly dead, or possibly still out hunting. I don't know."

"What should we do -- we have to go to work --"

"I am sure that what is happening is due to the drought. If she is alive, she is having a hard time finding enough food to produce milk to feed these babies. She must have brought them here, knowing there is water and moist soil so she can catch snails and such. We have been seeing the cotton hull mulch scattered out of the beds and into the trails, so I bet she is someplace around here. Remember, I saw an adult skunk just a couple of days ago. Let's leave them here for the day."

When we returned late that afternoon the dying baby was dead, but it was lying in the mulch near the propagation table fifteen feet from where we had left it near the food. The little male stood over it until we neared, when he again retreated to the east of the lath house. We wondered if he had dragged her to a cooler, moister environment. Surely she couldn’t have traveled that far on her own. I picked her up with a rag, shook off the bugs, flies, and fleas and took her to the Ceremonial Grove where I buried her in the leaf-needle mulch of the Arizona Cypresses. None of the other three skunks were visible.

The next morning we prowled around the east end of the lath house. "Here are two more. They are dead," I reported to Deborah. Even at 8 a.m., the sweat dripped from our faces. "I will come back at sundown and take them to be buried with the first one. I cannot take the time right now." The little male was on the slab of slate where the first sister was found. "He is dying, as well."

When we returned that evening, the little male had made it back to his sisters' sides, and died. His valiant sense of belonging brought tears and a long quiet evening after the burial. This year, in the drought-stricken southern Llano Estacado, such stories are repeated a thousand thousand times over, every day.