Walking back from the all night grocery store with a small bag (which says “be the change” on it)  I turned up Cumming, a quiet one block street that leads to the famous corner where it joins Seaman.  It was 2 a.m. and garbage was set out in black plastic bags for early morning pick up.  Looking ahead and to my left I saw an odd looking cat moving among the garbage bags.

Strange looking cat, I thought as I got closer, with that wide beige back, and the dark fur everywhere else, the pointy face is not a cat’s face, nor that stripe on his head, nor cat ears, and what an odd splayed tail.

“Skunkie,” I said casually as the wild animal eyed me momentarily.  I noticed the skunk’s back was toward me, in position, and thought for a second “please, don’t spray me, man.”   I was like that kid getting tasered because he’d worn a t-shirt insulting to a powerful politician.  Don’t tase me, bro.

The skunk, satisfied that I was not going to try to pet him or otherwise molest him, that I was staying to my side of the narrow sidewalk, walking away at a steady but not alarming clip, looked after me to make sure I was serious about avoiding a show-down, and then went back to looking for dinner in the loose collection of plastic garbage bags, very businesslike.

I thought of another gentleman skunk I’d seen in the neighborhood a few years ago.  This one stepped out between two parked cars to cross Seaman Avenue, not far in front of my bike, also long after midnight.  I slowed, and the skunk, very self-assured, paused to look at me.   His look seemed to say “you know who I am, you know what I can do.  I say you move nice and slow and I walk across the avenue to my buffet.”   I agreed at once, waited straddling my bike as he unhurriedly crossed the wide avenue and disappeared among the black plastic bags.

To this day I’m convinced that skunk was the spirit of Sekhnet’s father, Sammy.  It was just after the good-looking, dapper 92 year-old died and my first thought, seeing the good-looking intelligent face of that skunk, calculating and shrewd, was that Sammy’s  spirit was visiting me in the person of this handsome little forest creature out for some human food on a Wednesday night.  When I told the story to Sekhnet she had no doubt her father had contacted me in the person of the skunk.