<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />Run From Sin
 
 
Skunks must migrate, not like hummingbirds or Canadian Geese, but like the great creatures of the frozen north: caribou, wolves, and other such beasts.
I did not learn about the migratory patterns of skunks on National Geographic or the Discovery Channel.  I do not remember it from kindergarten.  I did not find it on some obscure blog.  Rather, I made it up.
I'm something of a naturalist, charting the behavior of the critters that roam my 3.3-mile daily commute down and around the Ten Mile Creek drainage.  In my comings and goings, I've noted more dead skunks in the middle of the road stinking to high heaven in late September than any other time of year.
More dead skunks, I've observed and deduced, must be a result of more live skunks on the move.  It's a simple matter of mathematics.  For every number of skunks (x) that cross the road, a percentage (y) fail to stop, look, and listen, and thus there are more dead skunks in the middle of the road (z).
I've also noted another peculiarity about dead skunks in the middle of the road.  They stay there.
All other slow-footed vermin lay dead BESIDE the road.  I've often wondered if they make it to the edge by themselves or if relatives pull them out of traffic after rush hour.
Pay attention and you will see that dead opossum, squirrels, raccoons, and wolverines are usually dead beside the road.  Who moves them?
 In contrast, skunks get run over in the middle of the road and stay there until pulverized.  God did not make another creature willing to handle a dead skunk.  Vultures would rather starve.
Last week I felt like a prisoner in my own subdivision.  Every exit was polluted by a dead skunk. 
Don't be surprised if these nomadic skunks don't turn out to be some sort of terrorist plot. 
In a hurry on Monday morning, I decided to make a run for it and take Wintergreen west, even though I had learned on Sunday night, passing east on Wintergreen, there was a fresh kill in the middle of the road.  (Why can't they just stay at home on Sundays?)
I veered as far as possible from the little black and white pile of fur near the white line, making sure my car did not touch the accident scene.  I held my breath from <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Cockrell Hill Road to Duncanville Road hoping to avoid the unpleasantness. 
Later in the morning I got into my car and smelled skunk.
I told my secretary, and she gave me that look.
I thought it must be my imagination.
Not paying attention, I drove home Monday night over the dead skunk on Wintergreen one more time, but once again was careful not to touch.
Tuesday morning, I opened my car door to get in and got blasted with skunk.
Here's all I can figure: I forgot to turn off my air conditioner when passing over the skunk.  Apparently, skunk stink is so powerful it can enter your car through the air conditioning ducts and still be there the next morning.
That's powerful stink!
We need to figure out why skunks cross the road and stop them.  If they're hungry, let's drop ship nuts and berries along the creek.  If they're lonely, let's get them a television or a computer to keep them home.  If they are bored, let's find them a hobby.  If they are just plain ornery, let's exterminate them in a more sanitary fashion than death by SUV.
I took my Monday and Sunday suits to the dry cleaners and explained they were guilty by association.  They had been on me in the car through the skunk stink on Wintergreen.
How far would a commuter have to avoid fresh skunk not to be tainted by its stink?
It's a scientific fact that if you get too close to stink you will smell like it.  Examples abound in nature.
Consider the big-dollar Washington lobbyist with the white streak down his back masked with black shoe polish.  He may have changed his suit, but not his spots.  He is still a skunk, and the politicians that grab his stinking money will be forever corrupted by it.  Pleas of denial and innocence don't fool those of us with trained noses.  We know stink.
Consider the restless wife in the midst of an affair with a man who is a veteran of destructive encounters.  Her husband sniffs it out, retaliates, and now it is "he said," "she said," "he stinks," "she stinks."  The whole bunch needs scrubbed and disinfected.
Consider the teenager dabbling in petty crime, gateway drugs, illicit sex, sharper weapons, bigger lies, and more dangerous stunts.  He spends enough time with stink it is getting to the point where it doesn't stink anymore.
Have you noticed as an observer of human behavior that skunk stink and sin are a lot alike?
We had an old dog on the farm years ago who had been sprayed by skunks so many times he didn't care anymore.  It got so bad we had to shoot the dog.  Any critter that thinks he can win a spraying contest with a skunk has crossed the line.
It's a proven fact of life.  If we get too close to sin, it will spray us, and we will come away stinking to high heaven, where even God is offended.
The Good Lord equips us with good sense, a good nose, and a reliable conscience.  We can smell right from wrong.  It's when we choose to ignore the foul odor and roll in the stench like an old farm dog that we get ourselves in trouble.  We can't enter a cesspool and expect to come out smelling like a rose.
If you embrace sin, you will pay a price, sometimes at terrible cost.
The Bible's advice is to avoid sin, even the appearance of sin, even the possibility of sin.  "Flee from evil," we are advised.  Run from stink.