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© Wondertime

Hunters sniff out youthful adventure.

They were looking for babes.

They were hot-blooded young American males and they were on the lookout for hot babes.

They were at a summerhouse near the ocean and there were girls everywhere -- in halter-tops and skimpy shorts. But neither of them had the courage to speak to any of them.

When one of the girls told my son, Marty, who's 15 and not allowed to date until next year, that she and her friends were going to the outdoor theater that night, I explained, "She's trying to tell you to meet her at the outdoor."

And Marty said, "I thought she was telling me she was busy."

It turned out Marty and his buddy, Shane, were also busy.

They spent a month devising a trap to capture a skunk.

Every night, they rigged a rubber trash can with a fishing rope and a sampling of that night's dinner -- clams, hot dogs, bass.

Skunks came from all over the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Every morning, we'd wake to the aroma of a skunk's reaction to finding itself jerked upward by an exhausted kid -- who'd forced himself to stay awake 'till the wee hours for this opportunity.

Every morning, I would wake the boys with a roar: "We are NOT trying to attract skunks! That's why I cover the trash and put it in the garage! What is going ON?"

Nothing was, except being young and able to do something more or less harmless and goofy -- except, as I explained patiently, skunks can be rabid; skunks can make your basement room smell like Purgatory; skunks have claws as long as my little finger.

One morning, I awoke to find a series of notes in bold marker taped to the table: DO NOT OPEN THE TRASH CAN! THERE IS A SKUNK TRAPPED IN THERE. REPEAT. DO NOT OPEN THE TRASH CAN.

I went down the back stairs to look at the trash can, suspended six feet off the ground with the lid duct-taped six or seven times around. A large poster also was taped to the can: DO NOT TOUCH THIS CAN. IT CONTAINS A SKUNK.

Everyone on Cape Cod could tell it contained a skunk.

Everyone in CONNECTICUT could tell it contained a skunk, which had spent a miserable night doing what skunks do best.

The boys were hardly able to wake up, so exhausted were they by the Mighty Skunk Hunt.

But they managed, when I told them they had 10 minutes to rope the skunk-containing container to the top of the van (Shane already has his driver's license) take it into the woods, release the skunk and donate the trash can to the nearby dump.

It was the most excellent adventure ever.

Halfway down the bumpy road to the nature preserve, Shane asked Marty, "Wouldn't it be weird if the skunk got out of the can and -- Just at that moment, Marty saw a black-and-white face peering at him from his open, passenger-side window. He quickly rolled up the window. But the skunk, intent on payback, scrabbled at the glass. Finally, it leaped to much-deserved safety.

Shane and Marty told everyone they knew, several times.

We bought a new trash barrel with an even tighter lid.

Next morning, the house again reeked.

"Don't tell me you dared try to lure another skunk?" I asked threateningly. The boys shrugged.

I suggested, "Maybe it's the one you trapped coming back with all its family to do you in."

"No," Marty admitted, "We baited the new trash can. But if they all came, that would be the best."

Now, you are probably wondering what the point of a skunk story is. This one in particular. After all, you'd expect such an epic battle from a bear -- or at least a tuna. The point is that though excellent babes were giving the boys the eye -- especially when they dressed with casual chic for the Chatham A's games, with long-sleeved shirts cuffed and only half-tucked-in to their low-rider khaki shorts -- no one was taking names.

In the end, I felt sort of lucky to have, from this son at least, no bigger problem than a basement that still smells lingeringly.

In body, both of the boys are young men, quite ready to respond to the things they feel about excellent babes.

And yet, they seemed content to put the brakes on for this last summer. Perhaps they wanted one last summer of pranks and hoops and late-night poker games before the onset of the part of life that can really claw your heart to bits.

I don't take credit for this, though we have a pretty strict and thus-far successful policy on romance. All we ever did was give our kids permission to stay kids for as long as they chose, and not one has thus far fought to be a premature adult. As for the permission, I think a lot more kids than mine want it -- however much they complain.

By next year, the Mighty Skunk Hunters will be forgotten, by the hunters themselves, perhaps until they have their own children.

But I'll remember them, and I'll kind of miss them.

©Tribune Media Services. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission.

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