Thank you to Yolanda and Yoli and Carmen and Oscar for being such wonderful friends and taking on my problem as their own!!! Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.
I intended to just publish these photos of Yolanda, Carmen and Yoli helping to deal with the damage the skunk had wrought the night before, but as you will see if you read to the end, there was an interesting twist that lead to my relating another skunk story from 24 years ago. . If you haven’t already read it, to read Monday’s story, go HERE, Then return to this page to read the rest of the story.
On the morning after the great skunk attack, Carmen and Yoli arrived for their usual English lesson, but instead, generously bathed and rebathed the dogs in a solution of hydrogen peroxide, dish soap and baking soda while Yolanda washed their cages and pads.
After an hour’s efforts and another hour of lessons, when I returned to my blog, I found these comments by Annie and my responses
When I had published the story of my dogs being sprayed by a skunk in the early morning of March 17, I could not remember the Spanish name for skunk and every time I looked it up in a translator, it gave the traslation “Mofeta” which I had never heard of. It was Yolanda, arriving for work the next morning, who reminded me that skunk in Spanish was zorillo (as in that other fictional midnight visitor Zorro.)
So it was with some surprise that when I finally found time to look at comments for my blog that had described the encounter, I found these comments from Annie H: (I’m repeating them here, along with my comments durring the two-day conversation that ensued:)
Annie H March 17, 2025 at 4:42 AM: Zorrillo = skunk. Mofeta is more of a badger-type of animal, still stripey but not a skunk
Judy: March 18, 2025 at 6:40 AM: This is uncanny, Annie. How did you happen to mention a mofeta? I blanked out on the Spanish name for skunk and every time I tried to look it up in a translator on either my phone or computer, it said the translation was mofeta. I knew this wasn’t right, but just tried again and it said the same thing. It was the next day when Yolada finally clued me in that it was zorrillo! I never did mention the word mofeta in my blog, however, so your mentioning it seemed a bit of mental telepathy. Is your AI reading the mind of my AI?
Annie H March 18, 2025 at 7:09 AM: I like a challenge, even if it was nearly midnight here!Mofeta rang a bell and as we don’t have skunks in Europe, I checked it out. This is where common names become confusing, and I had to look at the Scientific names. Both Mofeta and Zorillo are Spanish names for Skunk.Then I found this:”The Spanish word Mofeta for skunk originates in Europe but skunks are not native to Europe. In French is mouefette and in Italian it’s moffetta. It could be a corruption of the word Italian word muffa which means – mildew, mould, must or mustiness. All of which smell bad, generally.Skunks are also called polecats. There is a member of the badger/marten family here called a polecat, it is one of the smelliest of that family. And is occasionally referred to as a skunk. Ignore my previous comment about Mofetta being a relative of badgers. So, I was confused, especially at midnight when I was thinking of going to bed! Once zorillo came up, I thought – that’s it, I’ve heard that one before. I include westerns in my reading material, so that’s where I’d heard it.
Judy, March 18: Even more amazing, Annie, that you should mention polecat. I’m going to reprint a story in my blog that is a chapter of a book I published 8 years after my husband’s death. Look at today’s post to read it.
:And here is the story that Annie’s comments prompted me to retell:
Finding Spirit through the Sense of Smell.
Lourdes wants to throw away the used up Virgin of Guadeloupe candle glasses on the mantle, but I stop her. It seems dishonorable, like abandoning friends who have sustained injuries while acting in your service.
These candles have been burning almost continuously since I arrived in Mexico. One is by Bob’s picture on the window ledge in the kitchen and the other by his picture in the large locket propped up on the chimney mantle in the bedroom. The candle that would be hardest to throw away was purchased on a kayaking trip to Baja California a few years ago. I’ve burned it on special occasions ever since and have used its last few inches to keep a vigil for Bob.
It is not that Bob is around me all the time. It’s that he’s there when I need him, like my own personal spirit. I don’t even know if I think he’s really aware of me. The point is that I’m aware of him and appreciative of the valuable things he brought to my life.
On that day in early December, after Pasiano the gardener left, I was overcome by a longing for Bob to be seeing the shadow of the tree outside the frosted glass of the bathroom window with the primitive Mexican sculpture on the window ledge, along with the blue glass jar full of papyrus. I was so overcome by the beauty of the house and the view every single day. With my heart, I wished that Bob could see it. With my brain, I knew that if he could see it now, as spirit, it would be unimportant to him. When he needed to have seen it was while he was still in his body, still human enough to find beauty one of the most important things.
The day Rita and I moved my things into the house, Mario and I had moved Bob’s tall plasticine figure from the van up the steps to the second story studio. He had made the figure in San Miguel and we had stored it in a storage facility here in Ajijic. He had intended to cast it in Bronze, but in moving it, it had been much damaged. I was not fond of it before. I found it’s large feet somewhat silly–like a “Keep on Truckin’” figure. Now I wondered about the integrity of changing it into something I liked before casting it. I feel the need to have his undone things finished for him–as I had done for 14 years. His son Jeff had taken the only large metal sculpture which was not yet finished. In the studio loft, I had found all of the molds for his sculptures. Perhaps I would have them cast in Mexico. Since we had worked so much together, even on the sculptures he finished in his life, it did not bother me to think of embellishing his bronzes in the way he had always done–each one different.
Bob had not been always with me since I moved to Mexico, but he had been much with me. And although he seemed to be indicating to me what might be wise to do, his presence seemed more humorous than sinister.
On the day he died, skunks moved in under our house in California for the first time in 14 years. The house was full of Bob’s kids and their wives, everyone working on a different project to honor Bob for his memorial celebration. We could smell the faint odor of skunk, but were too busy to deal with it. Maybe it would go away, we thought. But on the day of his memorial celebration, we woke to an all-pervasive scent. Debbie, our daughter-in-law, feared that we would have to cancel the celebration, but by afternoon the scent had wafted away.
A week or so later, I finally called the skunk removal man. I had awakened in the middle of the night to a scent of skunk so strong that it brought me from a dead sleep. “Bob,” was my first thought when I awoke, and before I fell back to sleep I expressed the deep sobbing sorrow I had expressed only a few times in the days since his death. When I awoke, the scent was gone.
Every day in the weeks before I finally left for Mexico, I smelled the odor of skunk. We found seven different tunnels under the foundation into the dirt-floored part of the basement. We sprayed, we trapped, we filled in. In addition to three skunks, I managed to trap a mouse, a jay and three baby raccoons, who made such a racket that I thought I’d trapped a cougar. As I opened the trap, they came tumbling out screeching, wrestling with each other, frenzied in their need to be free. But the moment they were a few feet from the cage they stopped, looked at me, then ambled back in my direction, more curious than frightened.
As I drove away from my home of fourteen years, I had more than skunks on my mind. For four months, I had been packing, arranging documents, moving and storing and selling two lifetimes of accumulations. I had closed down six studios, cleared out the two annexes to the wood studio, moved and sold and given away numerous tools. I had engineered two moving sales with the help of friends, nursed Bob through two months of illness and three weeks of dying, talked to every friend either of us had ever made in our lives, written dozens of thank-yous. Now I was about to drive alone to Phoenix to pick up the friend who would drive with me to Mexico. But I was so bone weary that I could not keep my lids open. The drive to L.A. was torturous as I bit my lip, slapped my face, jiggled my legs, turned the air conditioning on high, pounded my arms on the steering wheel until they were black and blue. Somehow, I managed to keep myself awake. When I dropped into bed in a motel north of L.A., I fell immediately asleep. The next day was just as bad. Now and then through both days of driving, I would again catch the odor of skunk. It was the cat, I’d think, but he was so buried in the mound of objects that filled the van that it seemed unlikely. True, he had picked up the faintest odor of skunk from just being in the proximity of the odor for so long, but this scent that I smelled would come and go, whereas he was always present in the car.
Once in Mexico, the skunk theme persisted. On my trip down with Bob, we had seen dead horses, dead burros, dead cows, dead cats and dead dogs in the road. Once we had seen a possum, another time what appeared to be a badger. But we had seen not one skunk.
On this trip down with Rita, however, we must have seen at least two dozen dead skunks in the road–probably many more.
Rita was in San Juan Cosala with me for about 4 days before having to return to the States. After she left, the odor of skunk returned. Every day I would catch a whiff –just one–of skunk odor. Usually it was in the sala, but once it was in the bedroom. Then a few nights after Rita’s departure, I awoke in the middle of the night to a pervasive odor of skunk. I sat up, moved to the door to open it and smell the outside air. Nothing. When I returned to my bed, the odor was gone. On the mantle, the candle by Bob’s picture flickered once, twice, three times.
The next day, I asked Celia if she believed in spirits.
“But of course,” she said. “What is important is that you learn to enjoy them.”
When I told her about the skunk odor, she said, “But if you had a candle burning, you should not have been able to smell the skunk. It is true, the candle it makes you not to smell the skunk.”
I then told her that that very day I had found the bag of Bob’s ashes in the closet. The night before I left the states, my friends Dan and Laurie had brought over the seed-shaped urns for his ashes. The plan was to fill each of ten urns with ashes, to seal them with wax, and when the kids all came in May, to give each an urn to scatter as they wished and to scatter mine in the back yard. His sister Barbara would get the remaining urn. But I didn’t want to distribute the ashes by myself, so I had decided to wait until my friend Sharon came in December. So, although Bob’s pictures resided in places of honor, his ashes were relegated to obscurity in the closet.
“Oh, we must bring Bob out of the closet,” said Celia. “Tomorrow when we go to Guadalajara, it will be the first thing we do.”
And so within 24 hours, Bob was residing on the mantle in a terra cotta cookie jar with white spirals. Next to him were the seed pod urns which seemed to number 11 instead of 10. I knew this was for a reason, but I guessed that reason would reveal itself later. After that time, there was no odor of skunk for two days. Then came the day that my new friend Robert appeared at the gate. It was the day that we went to the San Juan Cosala square and heard the computerized Christmas music at the shrine to the Virgin of Guadeloupe. The day I met Michael and Nan. The day we went for hamburgers in San Antonio. My relationship with Robert was completely innocent. There had never been a whisper of flirtation or sexual energy. Yet when Michael called him “Bob,” it caused a shock wave to go up my spine. It had occurred to me that his name was Robert and that Bob’s real name was Robert, but It had never occurred to me that this new Robert was a Bob as well. My eyes teared over a bit, as they were wont to do at the strangest times. Sometimes these chance mentions of something I associated with Bob would bring about a brief spell and then be over, but at other times I seemed not to be able to contain the emotion, which would spill over in tears and sometimes sobs–especially in the presence of a sympathetic soul. This was one of the times when the sensation passed quickly.
What would Bob think if he could see me out with another man? Would he believe that it was innocent? It was true that I felt still tied to him. When the man at the Fiesta had asked me to have a drink with him, it was not just the fact that I was with Celia that held me back. I had answered him as a married woman might. If Bob as spirit was aware of my actions in the world, surely he was also aware of my true feelings. Perhaps more than I was. So why was it that as we opened the car doors to go into the restaurant, that the familiar smell wafted over us?
“Huh, skunk!” said Michael, dispelling for once and for all the feeling that all of these aromas might reside only in my imagination.
What I have written is the unexaggerated truth. Perhaps a string of coincidences, but I prefer to call them synchronicities, and if I draw a measure of comfort from labeling this string of synchronicities as spirit–then what is the harm of it?
As Bob lay dying he yearned for me to accept his philosophy of life after death, in fact was angry with me for most of the last day we had alone together. If I did not believe in his concept of a heaven where we could be together, then it made that union impossible. He could not accept the fact that it could occur even though I had a different definition of life after death. That I couldn’t accede to his dying wish is the thing that could torture me most if I would let it. His irritation with me as I tried to nurse him and help him seemed just an outgrowth of his natural temperament and the intense pain he was going through. The same thing had happened to my father. Yet I wondered if part of the irritation was tied to what he saw as my stubborn refusal to accept his faith. Over and over again he had asked me to read Swedenborgian literature. I had tried, but the reading was so torturous for me and brought me so far from where he wanted it to bring me that I just couldn’t do it. When I asked him instead to explain the philosophy in his own words, he couldn’t do it. It was as hard for him to break through his wall of silence as it was for me to read boring pedantic words.
In this we were worlds apart–always were. I needed to experience firsthand anything before seeing the truth in it. For Bob, it was more a matter of reading about it and then spending long hours staring into space and thinking. I learned by talking or writing or doing. He learned by reading and thinking. He could never believe that I could come to the same wisdom by experience that he came to through reading. Nor did I ever feel that he had as much confidence and comfort in his faith as I had in mine. A few days before dying, he had approached the topic in his own way when he said to me, “I can’t believe that someone who professes not to believe in God could live her life so much as though she did.” Now as I think about this I see that it is an exact statement of the difference between us. He was coming so close to an understanding of the similarity of our faith but his own faith kept him from seeing it as anything but a difference.
Somehow, as I lived on without him, I felt like this question of our communication was still being worked upon, each of us in our own way, with our own degree of dedication to the matter. I continued to work out in life what he needed to figure out as pure abstraction. That this could happen without either of us being kept from progressing on in the stage of life we were proceeding through did not seem impossible to me. I was letting myself be led by Celia as well as the mystic happenings that continued to happen now and then. In giving my whole life over to this new country, new friends, new experiences, I was trying to proceed along the path which would lead to what came next. I had to believe that what ever path I took, I would carry Bob with me. And it was appropriate to his personality that the messenger who brought me back to what I should remember was a bit of a stinker–insistent, beautiful, tenacious, impossible to deny with the senses.
It was my sister who reminded me a month or so ago that my dad’s nickname for me as a child had been “Polecat.” I could imagine the two of them–Bob and Dad, who never met in life, meeting for the first time as spirits and coming up with this joint joke on me. I hope it is true. But unlike Bob, I don’t have total faith that it could be. I just take the part of it I can hold on to. And I hold on.
Judy’s note: I guess that what goes around comes around. Do you agree? There is a further tale to be told about my father and Bob’s otherworldly relationship that I discovered not long ago when going through Bob’s journals, but I may or may not tell it in the future.
Photo of rooftop washing day by Gwendolyn Anderson on Unsplash
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 