Spunky Skunk vs Cowed Cougar

In yesterday’s post, I described my uneasy efforts to release a skunk from a trap. During that process, I kept reminding myself to not get complacent; just because I’d never been sprayed, I shouldn’t think it couldn’t happen. It didn’t, and even though I eventually had to agitate the animal a bit to get it to leave, it never made any threatening motions.

In fact, in my experience — admittedly limited and YMMV — skunks are pretty chill. And when you think about it, there’s good reason: their defense mechanism is probably one of the most effective on the planet, and humans aren’t the only ones to recognize that fact. Case in point is the following video originating from Canada, in which a cougar (the mountain lion kind, not the older-woman-predator kind) discovers that his threat pales alongside a skunk’s.

One suspects that the cougar has learned about the skunk’s odoriferous emanations the hard way, although that begs the question of whether cougars are really so stupid as to think that another encounter would yield a different outcome. Or, maybe, it was just that hungry.

Anyway, the apparent lesson for us less-stinky humans is that when we need a boost in self-confidence, we simply need to picture ourselves as skunks. [insert political figure joke here]