Adventures in Yardwork

We have three dogs. They live, for the most part, in the house.
We also have skunks. They live, for the most part, in the area surrounding the retention pond/swamp behind our house, on the other side of the railroad tracks. Sometimes, the dogs and the skunk(s) cross paths. Those are very bad times.

Those times involve me giving very stinky dogs baths in the garage, usually between 9 PM and 5 AM, when I'd rather be sleeping.

Today's short tale involves a skunk. Fortunately, the dogs were not involved, Unfortunately, I was. Fortunately, the Skunk was dead. Unfortunately, It still stunk, like a Skunk.

So what happened?

One of my neighbors, a nice woman, has hired me to undertake a great deal of yard work and landscaping on her property. I work 5 or 6 hours a week, and among other things, I have been reconstituting several defined areas of bushes and plants, weeding them and putting in fresh mulch. Late last Friday, before taking the beloved Mrs C to dinner at Outback, per her wishes for our wedding anniversary, and I was out on the aforementioned property, working near some underbrush close to the railroad tracks.

I kept smelling skunk spray, but I didn't see it any where. I was on my knees, working my way around the flower bed. I grabbed a hold of a weed, and worked my hand down through the surrounding grasses, to try and grab the 4 + foot tall weed as close to the ground as possible and pull it out. It felt soft near the ground, and I let go, pulled the grasses back, and peered in to take a curious look.
I damn near jumped out of my shoes to see the face of a skunk staring back at me. It took a couple of seconds, but I realized it wasn't moving. The smell was bad, but not too bad. It was dead, and the evidence behind it suggested a battle of the food chain of epic proportions. It wasn't all that big of a skunk, it was probably not all that mature, but there were a great deal of very large feathers on the ground behind the body and around it. We do have a very large hawk living in those trees, and he has been seen snagging squirrels and such to eat.

I have never heard of a hawk or bird of prey snagging a skunk, or maybe it was one of the owls that lives back there, I couldn't tell you what the feathers were from, other than it must have been big.

I didn't touch the skunk again, and I didn't tell the nice lady who owns the place about it. No need freaking her out, was my thinking. I took my shovel and scooped it up. I took the corpse to the rear of the property and buried it. It's only 4 doors down from me, so Wednesday night, when I was out in the yard with Sally at dusk, and I saw Sally start heading for the black and white striped critter waddling along our property line below the railroad, I quickly grabbed Sally dog and dragged her into the house.

I wonder if the skunk was looking for a departed friend? I know it's a skunk, but I feel bad for it. Hey, they're one of God's creatures too. I wonder if we smell as bad to them as they do to us?
Think about that for awhile.