Skunks smell like coffee

Having been essentially away from blogging for over a year, I'm starting back slowly. Bare with me as I post the occasional offbeat thought as well as reporting on the fluctuations of local gasoline prices.

Anyhow, being as I live in a quiet town in a semi-rural county, I either run across the standard fare of roadkill (deer, skunks, squirrels, coyotes) or, on a more frequent basis, sniff what many describe as the stench of skunk.

What you may also notice is that often roadkill skunks don't smell like, well, skunks until days later. I'm guessing that's because the two glands that carry the chemicals that create the odor only breakdown and decompose days after death. At that point, the chemicals combine and create the offensive odor.

Maybe, I'm odd, but I no longer find the odor that skunks produce as a defense mechanism as offensive. I've taken the opposite stance. Being a big coffee drinker and having once worked various coffeehouses in Los Angeles, I think skunks smell like coffee beans or ground coffee. Seriously. I'm rather sure getting sprayed by a skunk or having a pet get spray is none to pleasant as having to experience the smell up close to far different from the experience of smelling it through your car vents or in small quantities through the air.

And in my constant effort of annoying a friend of mine by teaching her kids adult-annoying quotes or nonsense words, I've taught them that "skunks smell like COFFEE!!"

So the next time you smell skunk odor, take a minute to think. Does it really smell bad because we've been conditioned to think it smells bad or does it really smell like stepping into Starbucks?