'Skunked' at the border

I couldn't resist posting this ... about a month ago, a wild skunk was found asleep inside a shipment of piping from California. The skunk had to be returned to it's native habitat, or it wouldn't survive; I guess it's telling (and perhaps a little comforting) to know that even a skunk will have to deal with hassles at the Canada-U.S. border.

Smell you later: Skunk is off home
http://www.thestar.com/article/178959

Feb 07, 2007 04:30 AM

Bill Taylor
Feature Writer

Dorothy the skunk is on her way home to California. But not without a stink at the border.

It wasn't because of Dorothy spraying. It was U.S. customs officers who, though the skunk's paperwork was all in order, couldn't believe she might not be an illegal immigrant, says Nathalie Karvonen, director of the Toronto Wildlife Centre.

It took more than an hour for rescue worker Alison Cooper to talk her way from Windsor to Detroit, Karvonen said yesterday. "It was a different officer to the one we'd been dealing with and the reaction was, `You're doing what?' Cooper finally had to leave her passport as surety and retrieve it on her way back."

The skunk showed up in Mississauga Jan. 5 in a truckload of piping that had been on the road from Torrance, south of Los Angeles, for a week. Dorothy had crawled into a pipe before it was loaded and fallen asleep.

The problem was returning her. Not only would it be illegal to release her into the wild in Ontario; skunks are territorial and she wouldn't survive long.

The centre needed a volunteer to drive Dorothy the 3,500 kilometres home. Not everyone is prepared to share their vehicle with a skunk, though, Karvonen pointed out, "they're very gentle animals who ... are not very quick to spray."

Once her plight was made public, the centre had offers of help from as far away as Switzerland. And she'd found a name.

The centre is careful never to think of its charges as anything but wild animals. Pet names are a no-no. But some people started calling the skunk Dorothy, after the heroine of The Wizard of Oz. "She fell asleep and woke up somewhere totally strange," Karvonen said.

Trace Nealy, host of a California radio station morning show, and her producer, Ryan Miller, took vacation time to pick up Dorothy from Detroit in an RV. They collected her from Cooper on Monday.

"She's awfully cute," they said yesterday in a blog from the road. "It smells fine so far. No problems yet."

The trip will take about four days and each night they'll stop at a wildlife refuge where experts will tend to Dorothy.

"We expect her to be released Friday evening," Karvonen said. "She should be fine."