Dear friends,

We have a good population of groundhogs around here, and they (with their rodent colleagues the squirrels) have done pretty extensive damage to our modest vegetable garden. We haven't gotten a single tomato thanks to those creeps. For a time, I thought I might protect the garden adequately if I could rehome some groundhogs. So I set out a livetrap, baited with cantaloupe, and waited.

I have sometimes seen a skunk on our road, so I wanted to take pains to ensure I didn't trap him. Fortunately, groundhogs are active during the day and skunks at night. So if I made sure to take my trap in at night, everything would be fine.

I maintained my daytime groundhog trap for a few days without catching anything. The groundhogs either hadn't found the trap or were disinterested. Then one morning I woke up early to the sickening realization that I had forgotten to pull my trap the night before. Lurching to gaze out the front window, I discovered it had taken only one attempt to catch the skunk.

Let me tell you, it is really something to confront a skunk in a live trap first thing in the morning, before coffee. It is not exactly a meditative experience.

I live on a residential street near the center of town, so even if I owned a gun it wasn't an option to just shoot the skunk from a long ways away. Besides, I bore him no ill will. He wasn't doing my garden any harm, and I could spare him the bit of my cantaloupe he had consumed. He had dug up the lawn beneath the trap in his attempts to escape, but I could hardly blame him for that.

My only hope, it seemed, was to approach the skunk slowly and calmly, trying not to seem a threat, then to release him from the trap and get away quick. I drug myself into some old clothes, said a prayer, and set myself out. I did not think too much about what I would do if I got sprayed while everyone else in the family was still asleep. I probably should have woken Rachel up while I still smelled like myself, but that thought did not enter my early-morning brain.

I grabbed a tarp from our shed and made my way toward the garden, nerves buzzing. The skunk had its back to me and didn't notice my approach for a long time—which didn't stop me jumping nervously away more than once. I made my way to a large stump not far from the trap and hunkered down behind it in the desperate hope that it might give me some protection. Skunk and stump were probably about four feet apart from one another. As I gingerly left my cover, I thought to myself: "profiles in courage."

No bomb defusal unit ever inched their way closer to a suspicious package than I crawled toward that skunk, trying to make myself look small and unthreatening. (This is difficult, as I am naturally a large and imposing person.) I moved with agonizing slowness. I spoke to the skunk in a wheedling tone of voice, calling him "friend." I tried to adopt body language that a skunk would find ingratiating.

It was five thirty in the morning and our street was quiet. My neighbors, thankfully, had not begun to stir. But at one point a car did pass by, as I stood there, in full view of the street, cringing before a skunk in a cage. Whoever you were in that driver's seat, I hope you enjoyed it.

Gradually, gradually, I edged closer to the skunk, and no bomb went off. Gradually, gradually, the sky lightened as he and I conducted our friendly little tête-à-tête. Then I was within reach of the trap, and in a rush, but a gentle and nonthreatening one, I draped the tarp over the trap and we disappeared from one another's view. I popped the trap open and ran for the house, still clean. I reached the front window just in time to see the skunk disappear into the culvert under our driveway. He was, I'm sure, just as relieved as I was to be done with the ordeal. It was only about six o'clock, and I could proceed with my day now assured that I had gotten my healthy little adrenaline rush for the day.

From this experience, I have no great conclusions, except perhaps that "skunk in a live trap" might make a nice, folksy addition to the various English idioms for a difficult situation. That, and take your livetraps in at night if all you're gunning for is a groundhog.

I still haven't caught a groundhog, but the increasing size of my tomato vines and a little judicious fencing has rendered the issue moot. I'm still seeking a solution for those damn squirrels, though. Thankfully live traps aren't an option.