Lily to the Rescue: The Not-So-Stinky Skunk by W. Bruce Cameron

Author:W. Bruce Cameron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

I let her do this, because I love her. Then I stood up and shook as hard as I could.

The coat did not fall off. But the hood flopped forward over my eyes. I shook my head hard to make it go away. It only flopped down farther until it hung over my nose.

My girl was giggling. Dad was laughing, too.

None of this could possibly make sense to a dog.

Dad said, “Once you two are all warmed up, there’s something we’ve got to do.”

“What, Dad?” Maggie Rose asked.

“Find that skunk.”

* * *

In a little while, Maggie Rose figured out that I did not want to be in her coat and took it off me. She rubbed her hair hard with the towel and hung it up on a rope stretched between two trees. “Ready!” she told Dad.

“Great,” Dad said. “If that skunk actually can’t spray, it can’t defend itself. And we can’t leave it out here like that. So let’s see if Lily can track it down.”

“Find the skunk, Lily!” Maggie Rose said to me.

I sat down on the ground and looked up at her. What game were we playing now?

Maggie Rose hurried off down the path toward the water. I followed, of course. When she reached the bush where I had met my black-and-white friend, she stopped. She pointed at the thick shrubs.

“Skunk, Lily!” she said. “Find the skunk!”

Clearly, Maggie Rose wanted me to do something. I tried to think what that might be. Some sort of treat would probably help me figure it out. That bacon would be best.

“Find the skunk!”

Skunk. She and Dad had said that word earlier, before Maggie Rose and I had played the strange game in the water. Were we playing another game now?

The way Maggie Rose was saying “find the skunk!” reminded me of being in the backyard, when she would say, “find the ball!” When she said that, I would run around until I found a ball and bring it to her.

Maybe I was supposed to find the skunk!

No, that didn’t seem right. I gazed at my girl’s face.

“Find the skunk! The skunk!” she urged.

I’d never heard “skunk” before, and now it seemed like all anyone wanted to say. I looked around. No skunk. I poked my head into the bush. I couldn’t see any skunk there, either.

But I could smell it. I put my nose down to the ground and sniffed. I pushed through the shrubs and followed the skunk’s trail, right to the mossy log where I had been treated to a good sniff of her butt. When I had left to play in the water with Maggie Rose, the skunk had climbed over the log and wandered off among the trees.

I clambered right over the log and followed her scent trail.

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