[Summit] The Kitten, the Coyote and the White Skunk

[Eric Army]

These post subjects read like a children's story book...

One day a kitten was frolicking along the Boulevard, dodging runners and distracting dogs, enjoying the seasonably warm winter day. Spotting an interesting disruption in the Swan Point Cemetery stone wall, she skittered across the road to investigate. Soon after dipping into the mysterious underbrush of the local arboretum, she was awash in new sights and sounds. The rustling leaves drowned out the cars, though only yards away, while the chipmunks whistled as they chased each other along the tree branches. 
Then, stepping into a clearing, our free-spirited adventurer came across one of the infamous neighborhood coyotes. She had been warned of such animals, graceful and harmless, yet not as rare as one might think in our slightly wooded urban environment. Their charm and beauty was only tempered by their natural predatory instincts towards lesser mammals, of course only when provoked, hungry, or up for some adventure of their own. 
Unsure of the coyote's intentions, our kitten stepped left, then darted right, inadvertently catching our new friend's attention. The coyote's ears' perked and it started--but with a hobble. Our kitten relished the extra moment this bought her, but knew she needed cover, and bounded behind a tree, then over a log towards an interesting patch of white where she thought she might lose her pursuer. But alas! The hobbling coyote was on hot her tail.
As our kitten fled, the white patch began to look less like refuge, and more like a ball of fluff. Inquisitive to the end, our fearless explorer leapt through the final bramble and found herself now between a hobbling coyote and the fabled White Skunk. As she turned to run again, not sure of to where this time, the storied skunk stepped in front of our kitten, now cornered, and lazily proceeded to amble past her, into the path of the once Hobbling, but now Screeching, Coyote who, in his 
many years, had more than once learned the fate of those that cross White Skunk. Our coyote, whose own curiosity began to quickly wane in light of a feared fumigation, hobbled with what was left of his dignity in a direction other than that of the gently swaying white puffy tail. 
Our young kitten friend breathed a sigh of relief at her unexpected rescue, and the stately old skunk merely motioned with his tail for her to follow him. Her call of the wild fulfilled for the day, she happily let him lead her away from the clearing and the coyote, the woods and their subtle whispers, back to the stone wall. The White Skunk looked both ways, and crossed one lane of the Boulevard to bring her back to adventure of domestic variety: barking dogs, plodding feet and curious children. As the thankful, and slightly more learned, kitten made her way back to her home off Hope Street, a few passer-by-ers in the park noticed a curious white animal, slowly ambling its way along the stone wall, into the bushes. 

Wisdom overcame Instinct that day, and it saved our coyote from a putrid perfume. The Respected also watched out for the Troubled, saving our naive kitten from an unknown fate. And maybe a few of the passer-by-ers on the Boulevard gleaned some wisdom or insight of their own into the ways of the Wise and Respected from the fable of the Kitten, the Coyote and the White Skunk...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sna.providence.ri.us/pipermail/summit_sna.providence.ri.us/attachments/20070103/afa6baf3/attachment.htm>