Two skunks made babies in my yard last week,
assuming that was reproductive sex:
two poufs of jet bisected by a streak
of white elongating their backs and necks.
That’s two months early, says the Internet.
Their mating season doesn’t start in fall.
Wait six and sixty days now; will we get
a winter litter in the yard at all?

We’ve seen at least a quad of kits each spring.
At times I’ve sensed their reek released at play.
My neighbors cringe at skunks, but everything
they do is cute, and never do they spray
a careful resident, who’s no canine –
compared to ‘coons and ‘possums, skunks are fine.