By Philippe G. Willis
Contributing Writer
On the night of our nation’s 250th-birthday, we ascended our hill in the post-dusk dark to wait for the beginnings of a neighboring firework show. But before a single colorful eruption lit up the night sky, we eyed something strange floating across the blackened field. A thin, ghostly white, wispy, bouncing thing. A cat, she said! A weasel, I wondered? Our little squirrel dog, so much faster than our scrambling minds, quickly descended upon it, barking wildly, darting back and forth, thinking it some new creature to catch, eat, or bay.
“BACK! BACK!” I shouted, running in to intervene, when suddenly I saw the dreaded white tail, raised, fanned and ready. A skunk! A polecat! I staggered back in shrieking retreat. BANG! The first firework exploded in luminous streaks over the distant mountains, booming and echoing through the valley. The nocturnal critter, whose black coat had blended into the night, leaving only its thin white stripe for our eyes to perceive, scampered off into a hedgerow and our stunned feist withdrew. Fortunately, the damage was minor, a glancing shot to our dog’s head of that “quintessence of diabolical stench,” as a 19th-century trappers’ guidebook so wonderfully described it. But with the help of the mighty internet, we successfully neutralized the infamous odor with a miracle solution of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and Dawn dishwashing soap. And the dog was welcomed back in bed a day later.
The “pole-cat” as many of you here in the mountains of West Virginia still call the skunk, is the confusing name one often sees in old natural history books such as Peter Kalm’s “Travels into North America” [1748-1751] in which he states that the polecat’s “urine” can blind a man or dog and if you get it on your clothes, the only remedy is to bury them in fresh soil for 24 hours. Kalm claimed they were easily tamed as pets both by Indians and frontiersmen and that their meat was said to taste like pork. Having no skunks in Europe, however, the word “polecat” prior to the New World meant a totally different animal. The European polecat is the ancestor of today’s domesticated ferret, once a source of 15th-century fur lining called “fitch” and in more ancient times was mysteriously associated with the Greek goddess of magic and ghosts. But in the early days of America, the polecat was the skunk. In the journals of the legendary wildlife artist, hunter, and ornithologist, John James Audubon, written between 1800-1830s, he describes a comical encounter between a European traveler and what the man thought was a beautiful black “squirrel.” Being “a true pole-cat [Mephitis americana]” however, the unacquainted traveler naively tried to pin it with a stick and pick it up. Doused, dismayed and infuriated, his winter cloak was ruined, his own horse shunned him, and they quickly wore out their welcome while seeking lodging from Kentucky farmers along their route.
While many today might agree with the following sentiment by the Victorian naturalist William Gibson, who decreed, “This disgusting animal has won the unenviable but deserving reputation of being the most foul-smelling creature on the face of the globe…” with its “horrid effluvium which it exhales;”
I take no offense on behalf of my dog. I find the polecat quite hilarious, having enjoyed watching them grub around in fields and once, chittering loudly in tall grass, burst forward and false charge me. Maybe you’ll find it surprising, but many trappers I’ve met not only become nose-blind to its noxious odor, but like the smell and consider the skunk a favorite animal, for no two pelts have the same markings. So, with the passing of our nation’s birthday, let us appreciate one of its strangest creatures, the uniquely American polecat.
