As a kid, there wasn’t a pet I didn’t want. And, we had a bunch of them … dogs, cats, fish, birds, frogs, horned toads, chicks, turtles … just about anything I could catch or my mom would let me buy. I suppose it was a blessing we lived in town … or we might have turned into the house into a zoo.
Our most unusual pet of all was a spotted skunk we called Gardenia. Gardenia came to our family as a gift from a very special man at the church I attended as a kid while growing up in a small Central Texas town. His name was Dutch Clark but to every boy and girl at our church, he was simply known as Uncle Dutch.
Although it wasn’t his real job, Uncle Dutch loved to farm. One spring day while he was plowing his field, he heard his plow go thump and felt it go bump. He stopped and got down. And his heart sank. Uncle Dutch had accidentally plowed into a spotted skunk nest. The mother skunk had burrowed into the ground in Uncle Dutch’s field. He didn’t know she was there. She didn’t know he would plow there. Of the family of four – the mother and three babies -- only one little skunk survived. Little Gardenia.
Now Uncle Dutch could have just got back on the tractor and left little Gardenia behind. But Uncle Dutch was one of the kindest individuals I ever had the fortune to know. He couldn’t do that. He knew Gardenia could never survive on her own. So he picked the stinky, sad little skunk up in his arms and carried her on his tractor around the field and to home.
The next morning, Uncle Dutch took Gardenia to the vet and paid for her stink sack and glands to be removed. And then he called me.
I don’t know why Uncle Dutch chose our family for a home for Gardenia, but I, unlike my mother, was ecstatic that he did. The little spotted skunk was probably the most exciting pet that had ever arrived at our house. But when I tried to pet her; she tried to bite me. And every time anyone walked near her, she would do a handstand dance on her front legs and then try to spray them. The more we tried to be kind, the more she tried to be mean. Gardenia was the most loved skunk in the state of Texas. But she wouldn’t accept it. Then one morning we woke up and Gardenia was gone. Off to try to survive without a mother, a brother or a sister. Without people who loved her. We never saw little Gardenia again.
As I’ve looked back at different times of my life at Gardenia, I can’t help but think we’re all just a bit like her. We obviously aren’t skunks, but someone very kind loves us very much. And rescued us from a cold, cruel world. He’s protected us. He’s loved us. He’s done everything for us. And yet, from time to time, we still run away. Off to face life on our own. Off to refuse Christ’s love, protection and care.
I’ve always wished that Gardenia had accepted my love. I’m comforted to know my Heavenly Father feels that way about me too.