When you had finished tidying up your campsite and taking a quick inventory, you found John sitting on a length of log you placed near the fire pit. Yesterday you'd rolled it from it's resting spot on the side of the gravel road, probably left there by a park ranger who needed to clear a fallen tree after a storm, and you were hoping that you could take an afternoon and chop all the firewood you could need for the week. Of course, now you had an unexpected guest, and you didn't anticipate needing a second camping chair so for now the timber would have to remain intact. Plus, you thought, considering how bad John smelled from only feet away, anything he sat on for longer than thirty seconds was probably too saturated with his smell to be safely burned.
You sat next to John on the rough bark, trying your best to breathe through your mouth. He had moved on to eating directly from your trash can, and while the scraps of roasted vegetables and mushrooms from last night were by no means rotten the thought of him eating from your garbage was still a bit uncomfortable. You clear your throat.
"So, John. Where do you live, around here?"
"I live here." He kept eating.
"Right, but, where do you live? Like, where do you sleep, usually?"
He shrugs. "Trees, usually. There's a cave nearby that's good if it's raining too hard, but when the weather's nice like this I can sleep anywhere. When it gets cold I den up somewhere, but I won't have to worry about that for a while."
"That sounds rough."
He shrugs again and finishes off the last of the trash bag with a handful of coffee grounds. "It's not bad. Besides, this is my home, you know? All this land is just for me." He looks over at you and continues. "And guests, of course."
You're taken back a little bit by that last comment. You'd felt like you were doing him a favor by letting him stay, but it seems he has the exact opposite opinion; you're on his land, and he's tolerating your presence.
Almost as if to demonstrate how comfortable he is in your campsite, John raises his tail a bit and blows a long fart against the timber. You struggle not to hold your nose, not eager to offend the mephit, but John barely seems to register your presence. He is a skunk, after all, and you doubt he has very much of a reason to be modest when strutting around his own patch of the forest. You do note, however, that his penis seemed to twitch and swell just a little bit more as he farted. You really hope that was just a coincidence.
John stands up, stretches, and starts picking around your campsite, examining your setup. As he stands you take a morbidly curious peek at the patch of log where he was sitting, and you can almost see a somewhat darker patch of bark right underneath where he was seated.
The skunk examines your camping equipment. You came well prepared, covering every emergency situation you could think of so you wouldn't have to cut your vacation short, and so he has plenty to sift through. He has questions about some of your less common pieces of kit (although he thankfully overlooks your food storage) and the two of you share some pleasant chatter while he absolutely rips ass all through your campsite. Despite the morning breeze blowing through the pines, his stench seems to cling the ground like a dense fog, not able to obscure your vision, but certainly enough to keep your from smelling anything but his funk. After briefly trying to balance on your gear-laden mountain bike (and, to your chagrin, leaving a dark brown smear on the seat) he finally gets to your tent. Without even thinking to ask your permission, he fumbles with the zipper and starts to force the tent flap open. You panic.
"Um, that's my tent!" you half-shout, balancing your need to stay on this skunk's good graces with your desire to not be huffing his residual fumes for the next five nights. He pauses, and turns back at you inquisitively. Your mind races to think of a lie. "I just... uh... be careful not to break the zipper?"
He nods, and (carefully) squirms his way into the tent. Your heart drops, and you follow him inside.
After struggling with the newly-jammed zipper for thirty seconds, you sigh and crawl in through the same small flap John entered through. The nylon has enough stretch to allow you to make it in, even with the newly-jammed zipper keeping the entrance tight, but you didn't have much room to maneuver. You squirm and crawl, and pull your legs in behind you, before triumphantly rolling over, lifting up… and very nearly bumping nose-first into John's inky black tail hole.
In a panic you freeze, and breathe in sharply - a costly mistake. You're not sure he even farted, but the raw power of John's stench sears itself into your brain. You throw yourself backwards, clasp your hands over your mouth and try very, very hard not to gag. Startling a skunk is already a bad idea, but if you make a scene behind a skunk of this size, the smell might never come out.
In a few seconds your senses return, and the skunky, funky air of your tent smells downright floral compared to the concentrated shot of skunk butt you just inhaled. You look back over at John, and see his rear still sticking out of the mouth of your sleeping bag, which he seems to have decided to investigate head-first. After a few more seconds of squirming his tail and legs disappear inside, and his head pops out in their place.
"This is nice!" he exclaims, wiggling around in your sleeping bag. "It's really warm. Is this for sleeping?”
You smile politely, and nod. You're not thrilled to have secondhand skunk polluting the one thing keeping you reasonably warm at night, but after the experience you just had, the lingering odor will surely be small peanuts in comparison. He wiggles a bit more, enjoying the texture, and you hear a muffled poot as he settles in.
You two share the silence of the tent for a few minutes, John resting, half-awake in your sleeping bag and you cross-legged on the tent floor, and you reflect on your trip so far. This chance encounter with John was proving to be a bit more consequential then you thought, but so far you’d managed not to offend him or give him cause for retribution, and he’s given you someone to talk to, despite his rear-end butting into the conversation more than you’d like. The two of you strike a conversation back up, trading some inconsequential chatter about human life versus life in the woods.
Your new conversation is unfortunately short lived, however. In the middle of talking John cuts himself off with a wince and a soft groan, and she shifts uncomfortably on his belly.
“Is something wrong?” you ask, assuming a tree root or something was poking him in a bad spot.
“Not really. Just a tummyache. Human food doesn’t always agree with me,” he responds with a slight pain in his breath.
That’s what you get for eating out of my trash!, you think, but you make the wise choice to express some concern. “Oh, no. I’m sorry that you’re not feeling well. Do you need to step outside?”
The skunk shakes his head. “No, I’ll be fine. Just gotta let it all out.”
You’re not entirely sure you understand until you see his eyes close and his tail flag upwards, tenting your sleeping bag behind his rear. Even though the fabric you hear a loud, wet-sounding fart erupt from his backside as he prepares to… oh, no!
Time slows down as your mind conjures an image of John flooding your sleeping back with skunk muck, and your mind goes into overdrive. The farting you could live with, but there was NO way you could salvage the trip if he craps himself inside your sleeping bag!
“JOHN!” you shout, surprising both the skunk and yourself with your volume. “Come on, not in my tent! Get out!”
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