A few amorous skunks are still crossing the highways and byways.

Breeding season is February through March. That fuzzy black animal with it’s warning white strip from head to tail comes Godcreated and equipped with a powerful protection device.

The smell of a skunk ranks right up there with rotten eggs and teargas. An unfortunate road kill can be sniffed five miles away and last roadside for 14 to 21 days.

We smell with every breath, yet scent is mute and needs descriptive words to identify. If you cover your nose and try to stop smelling, you will die. Breath is air that travels through the furnace of our cells—we breathe it, brew it and then turn it loose in a slightly altered version. God breathed into Adam, and so that Godbreath extends into today.

Every 24 hours, we each move around 438 cubic feet of air (two seconds inhale and three seconds exhale), all during which we smell odors.

Words linking smell and language are weak, but not so the links between smell and memory. Sherlock Holmes identifies a woman in “The Hound of the Baskervilles” by the smell of her notepaper. Napoleon told Josephine “not to bathe” during the two weeks prior to meeting so her natural aromas could be enjoyed. Coleridge recalled “a dunghill at a distance smells like musk...” Milton describes odors God finds pleasing as opposed to Satan’s preference of carrion—”scent of living carcasses.” The Song of Solomon weaves a luscious love story around perfumes, “lips drop as the honeycomb, honey and milk are under thy tongue...” Kipling said, “Smells are surer than sights and sounds to make your heart-strings crack.”

A few molecules of smell can transport us anywhere.

Charles Dickens claimed the mere whiff of bottle labeling paste would bring back the anguish of his earliest years when he was abandoned in a hellish warehouse where bottles were labeled. Abraham Cowley asked the following—Who that has reason, and his smell, Would not among roses and jasmine dwell, Rather than all his spirits choke With exhalations of dirt and smoke? Helen Keller said, “Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived...Even as I think of smells, my nose if full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.”

Now, back to the cuddly skunk. If you happen to be face to face, good.

Keep it that way. The skunk must turn and brace its back legs to spray. Your pet’s not likely to know that. Tomato juice, laundry detergent and baking soda, white vinegar and lemon juice, even Coca-Cola are good smell detractors.

But, at the price of groceries, and the fact the skunk is a good pest control, try to avoid the wandering animals. When a skunk’s nontoxic smell is released following an unfortunate road accident, and you and your car happen to be the perpetrator of said demise, a good car wash is in order.

Meanwhile, appreciate your dynamic ability to smell and think about all the plus factors. It does make sense to know your smells.