TOWNSHEND — I read with interest Alice Muise's story about the baby goose [“Make way for gosling,” The Commons, June 8].
In 1955, a long time ago, I was working for the Jamaica School District as school bus driver. This meant traveling dirt roads to pick up and drop off students.
On one trip, as I was driving back to town in the empty bus, I noticed something moving in the ditch, so I stopped. When I got out, I found a baby skunk trying to get up to the road. I picked it up, put it into my pocket, and drove home.
I thought it had been abandoned or lost, so my family - three young girls, my wife, and I - adopted the youngster.
We treated it as a pet cat or dog and gave it the run of the house. It would eat some of our food and, once in a while, I would dig up some worms for it.
The skunk became so tame it would follow my children to the nearby store and back without a leash.
One day, in the early fall, our pet skunk returned to the fields and woods on its own.
We were sorry it left but glad that it would join other skunks and live in the wild.