Animal Anomaly

Skunks may be the Rodney Dangerfield of the animal world. They get very little respect. On second thought, they get considerable respect – based on fear. And they may be among the critters using animal underpasses and the overpass along US 93 between Polson and Evaro.

At least there are fewer polecats squashed by highway traffic than there used to be.

Not so in Bakersfield, Calif., though. Not only did a skunk get run over by a car or two, but a highway painting crew striping  a road in Bakersfield added insult to the skunk’s demise. It painted right over the carrion – a double stripe at that. A picture in the “Bakersfield Californian” showed the result.

I bet the skunk still got the last word – before being put “out of odor.”

Snake oddities

Snakes make the news occasionally. I remember an Internet item that reported an elderly woman in Suining, in southwestern China, discovered a snake with a clawed hand protruding from its body.

She told a Chinese news agency that she woke up in the middle of the night when she heard a strange scratching sound. She turned on the light and saw a snake clinging to a wall in her bedroom. Frightened, the woman grabbed a shoe and beat the snake to death. A picture of the snake accompanied the story.

She reportedly preserved the snake’s body in a bottle of alcohol and gave it to the Life Sciences Dept. of China’s West Normal University in Nanchang.

The report brought to mind an incident in the early 1970s when Flathead Courier staffer Bob Gauld came across a rattlesnake with feet near Elmo. The snake had been run over by a car just before Bob drove by. Bob thought it looked odd. He stopped and went back to investigate. As I recall, the snake had what appeared to be four feet extending from the bottom side of its body. Pictures were taken and the snake was turned over to the U of M.

Squirrelly Squirrels

When I worked at the Roundup Record-Tribune in the mid-‘50s, a Roundup woman called the fire department and asked for help in dispatching a squirrel that she found in her house.

“He’s smiling at me,” she told firemen.

The firemen opened a door and the squirrel ran out.

That episode was solved a bit easier than a squirrel that invaded the Flathead Courier plant when it was located in the building now occupied by the Salvation Army store on US 93. On a sweltering summer day we had no air conditioning system in the building, which extended at that time all the way to the alley.

We kept the front and back doors open to try to get some ventilation.

A squirrel came in the back door and scampered around the press area. Courier printers chased him with brooms into the front office and out the front door. End of story? Nope. The squirrel must have thought that was so much fun that he went around the building and came in through back door again, which was still open. For the repeat performance the back door was closed.

Shades of Harvey

Remember the movie with Jimmy Stewart who had a 6 ft. tall invisible rabbit he called Harvey? A few years ago in our neighborhood was a jack rabbit. I was beginning to think he had adopted me. Often, when I went out the front or back doors, there was this little jackrabbit. Barely six inches tall and visible, he was no Harvey. So I named him Hardly.

After a cold spell weather. I hardly saw Hardly any more. But after about 10 days Hardly was back – at least briefly. Then he disappeared again, but returned in the spring. That led to an imaginary conversation with Hardly. You may remember it.  If I can remember it, I’ll recount it in the next column.