Sandy Hill woman rescues panicky skunk
A Sandy Hill woman has rescued a panicky skunk found staggering with its head stuck in a large jar — potentially a sentence of slow death for the animal.
Chaela Grace Kindness was on her way to work Friday morning when she saw the skunk on the street near her home at Somerset and Chapel streets.
“It had a huge spaghetti (sauce) bottle and his head was stuck in it,” she said. “It was a huge ordeal, but I got the bottle off. One of the neighbours gave me oil and a towel and we ended up being able to pull the bottle off the poor skunk.”
Kindness was wearing a suit, and realized she might be sprayed, “and I didn’t care, because it’s a poor animal and nobody else is going to do it, so Chaela Grace Kindness will.”
She used the neighbour’s oil to lubricate the inside of the jar. It was olive oil, “nothing but the best for my little skunk friend.”
“He (the skunk) fell over immediately afterwards,” she said. “He started wobbling on his little legs and fell over. He had spaghetti all over his face, the poor thing. I was cooing to him like he was one of my kitties to make him calm down. He was frantic. He came up to me and put the bottle in my hands. He wanted us to help him. He was a really nice little skunkie.”
She put an account of the rescue on Facebook and later contacted the newspaper with her story and a photo.
Kindness, 26, is an event co-ordinator at a non-profit called Startup Canada.
She wrote in her Facebook account of the rescue: “Just because he isn’t your cat or dog, doesn’t mean he isn’t worthy of living or being saved. Why do we as a society neglect living things, pick and choose based on discrimination? In time for the holidays, just remember we are all equals and no body/nothing is superior, for any reason.”
And she got to work with the suit still clean.