The duck glid­ed to a smooth land­ing in our swim­ming pool last May. Wild-eyed and froth­ing at the mouth, our Amer­i­can Bull­dog Zoey ran back and forth along the sand­stone skirt bark­ing fran­ti­cal­ly while the duck pad­dled lazy cir­cles in the water just out of her reach. After taunt­ing Zoey for an hour, she flew away. The next sev­er­al morn­ings she returned and the same scene played out.

I sent a cell phone video with a text mes­sage to our kids. “This duck vis­its our pool every day for the sole pur­pose of tor­ment­ing Zoey.”

Ducks had tak­en over my daughter-in-law’s par­ents’ pool years ear­li­er, and she knew what I was in for. “Oh no,” she replied. “She’ll lay eggs. You’ll have poop everywhere.”

She was right on both counts. I found the nest tucked under bush­es behind the pool. It sealed my fate. Dis­turb­ing a duck’s nest is a crim­i­nal mis­de­meanor in Cal­i­for­nia. Once she drops an egg, her squatter’s rights are absolute. She owns the place until she decides to leave.

The quan­ti­ty of poop defied the laws of biol­o­gy and physics. The duck drib­bled run­ny lakes of it every­where she went. Poop soon cov­ered most of the hard­scape. Oscar, the pool man, said it would stain the stone, so I slogged out to the pool and hosed and swept and hosed and swept while the poop machine float­ed in the water, quack­ing con­tent­ed­ly. This went on for four weeks.

Then every­thing changed. The morn­ing of June 10 the duck led sev­en lit­tle fur­balls into the water. I’d nev­er seen a baby duck up close. I stood by the pool and stared at them for a long time.

That day hos­ing and sweep­ing didn’t seem so bad.

Zoey had lost inter­est in the duck, and our oth­er dog, P.D., made friends with it, so I thought the duck­lings were safe in our back­yard. I was wrong.

The day after they were born, mama duck marched them across the yard to the frog pond. An hour lat­er, I found her stand­ing beside our rail fence on a hill­side strug­gling to main­tain her foot­ing. Trapped between chain link sta­pled to the fence to keep the dogs inside and the fine-mesh net that keeps the rat­tlers out, a duck­ling hopped around like a ping pong ball. It couldn’t get out and mama couldn’t free it.

The slope is steep and falls 100 feet to a rock shelf. At 73 with dou­ble knee replace­ments, I had no busi­ness climb­ing down that hill, but I was the only one there. Hold­ing on to the fence to keep my bal­ance, I slid down the hill, reached into the net­ting, and grabbed the lit­tle fur­ball. Where­upon mama duck flew into my face, whack­ing me between the eyes with her bill and box­ing my ears with her wings.

I fell, which on that steep grade was like jump­ing out of an air­plane back­wards with­out a para­chute. The fall didn’t kill me sole­ly because the only tree on the hill stood fif­teen feet direct­ly below me. I land­ed on it, impaled face up, its bro­ken branch­es spear­ing my back.  Spew­ing a string of curs­es, I climbed down stiffly and clawed my way back up the slope.

At the top, I found the duck­ling swim­ming in the frog pond while mama duck ran back and forth in the yard, des­per­ate­ly search­ing for the oth­ers. A line of tall podocar­pus trees stands along the fence line there. I heard the duck­lings cheep­ing some­where behind them, fought my way through their branch­es, and saw the babies run­ning in cir­cles in my neighbor’s yard. They’d appar­ent­ly slipped through a crease in the snake fence and couldn’t find their way back. Mama was too big to fol­low them through the hole and not smart enough to fly over the trees to join them.

Curs­ing again, I grabbed a tote bag from the pool house and climbed over the fence. The duck­lings thought I want­ed to kill them and ran amok. Push­ing my tita­ni­um knees to their lim­it, I juked, jived, and bee-bopped all over hell. I caught four, but couldn’t find the oth­er two. Exhaust­ed, I climbed back over the fence and returned the four to mama duck.

Lying in bed that night with my back-side paint­ed in iodine from neck to ankles, I couldn’t stop think­ing about the miss­ing duck­lings out there in the dark, lost and afraid.

In the morn­ing, only four babies swam with mama. One of those I’d saved was gone. I spent the day search­ing the yard, the slope, and the neighbor’s yard, all to no avail.

The next morn­ing, there were only three. The day after, two. Then one. I blamed mama duck. She would have lost all the duck­lings the day after they hatched if I hadn’t retrieved them. Now, her appar­ent neglect was killing the ones I’d saved.

The last duck­ling held on through the week. Each morn­ing I awoke with dread but was relieved to find it by its mama’s side.

On June 20, we found a big rat­tlesnake in our back­yard. It made me won­der. Hawks cir­cle the sky. Owls roost in our red­woods. Coy­otes prowl the horse trails. Maybe mama duck had done her best. Maybe she was heart­bro­ken, too.

Weeks passed. The baby grew to half mama’s size with the brown-speck­led mark­ings of a female mal­lard. In August, she took wing on her maid­en flight, glid­ed south, and bank-turned back to the pool.

The fol­low­ing week, mama flew away and didn’t return. Alone for the first time, the two-month-old duck hun­kered down on the hard­scape at night­fall, look­ing for­lorn. Feel­ing sor­ry for her, I tossed her pieces of bread the next morn­ing. She gob­bled it up. I gave her more at twi­light. By the end of the week, she was eat­ing it out of my hand.

When I told my six-year-old grand­daugh­ter about feed­ing the duck bread, she crin­kled her nose. “You shouldn’t do that, Papaw.” Bread doesn’t pro­vide the nutri­ents ducks require, she said. “It’s like eat­ing Big Macs all the time. It’ll make her sick.”

A lit­tle zool­o­gy-genius, she knows every­thing about ani­mals, but I checked with the inter­net experts just to be sure. They agreed I was killing my duck with junk food.

I bought fifty pounds of Puri­na duck pel­lets. The duck wouldn’t touch the stuff. Instead, she snarfed up left-over dog food from P.D.’s bowl. My grand­daugh­ter said the dog food was okay, but not healthy enough to sus­tain her. I tried mix­ing duck pel­lets with dog food. She wolfed it down, and from there on, she ran from the pool to meet me when­ev­er I opened the patio door to come and feed her.

She stayed with us through August and September.

One morn­ing in Octo­ber, she flew away but returned at twi­light. She came and went sev­er­al times over the next week. Then, a big wind storm ripped through Hid­den Hills. When it was over, she was gone. Wor­ried that she was injured, I searched but found no trace of her. She prob­a­bly migrat­ed to a warmer cli­mate, I told myself, hop­ing it was true.

Months rolled by with no sign of her.

In Feb­ru­ary, I was sit­ting in my home office when a female and two male mal­lards land­ed in the pool. I went to the win­dow and stared hard at the female. She’s prob­a­bly not my duck, I thought. There are hun­dreds of mal­lards in the area and they all look alike. Before I could get to the door, they flew away and didn’t return.

In March, I was stand­ing at the kitchen win­dow when a male and female mal­lard touched down in the pool. Same female as before, I guessed, down to one boyfriend for the mat­ing sea­son. When I opened the patio door to go out to the pool for a clos­er look, the female scur­ried out of the water, ran all the way across the yard, stopped in front of me, looked up, and cocked her head to one side. “Quack!”

A wave of relief washed over me. “Glad to see you, too,” I said softly.

I set a bowl of her spe­cial canine duck food mix out by the pool. She and her boyfriend lin­gered most of the day, then flew away.

She hasn’t returned.

Yet.

Last year, mama duck estab­lished her nest in May. I check the pool first thing every morning.

On a cold Sun­day morn­ing in 1963, Dad was preach­ing from the pul­pit at Mount Mori­ah Methodist Church in White Hall, Vir­ginia, when screech­es and howls came up through the floor and a smoth­er­ing cloud of nox­ious fumes filled the sanctuary.

Sit­ting in one of the front pews, Cecil Gib­son jumped up and yelled, “Skunk!”

Dad hus­tled down from the pul­pit, wav­ing his arms toward the back doors. “Every­one outside!”

Hack­ing and cough­ing, the con­gre­ga­tion stam­ped­ed down the aisles, through the vestibule, and out the door. As the crowd of wor­ship­pers sucked in fresh air under a grove of tall pines, Cecil found a breach in the wire mesh over an open­ing to the church’s crawl space. Shin­ing a flash­light into the dark void, he spied a male and female skunk in fla­grante delic­to.

Up to that time, Dad had stead­fast­ly refused to call off church ser­vices even in the face of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. He preached through floods, boom­ing thun­der­storms, and hur­ri­cane winds. Even when a big black snake slith­ered down the aisle and scur­ried under the piano in the mid­dle of Dad’s ser­mon, we dis­en­tan­gled the snake from the piano strings and Dad picked up right where he left off.

But skunk mat­ing sea­son posed a prob­lem like no oth­er. When the amorous cou­ple chose the warm space under the House of the Lord to seal their bond, they turned the sanc­tu­ary into a lethal gas cham­ber. Dad had no choice but to shut the place down.

It took three days for sev­er­al brave church mem­bers to chase the skunks from their hon­ey­moon bun­ga­low. By then the fur­nace had pumped their per­fume through heat­ing ducts into every nook and cran­ny. Cur­tains, cush­ions, and altar cloths were so mar­i­nat­ed in skunk juice they couldn’t be cleansed and had to be burned.

Fifty years lat­er when a pair of pole­cats bur­rowed under our house in San Mari­no, I remem­bered the lessons of the Mount Mori­ah skunk inva­sion. To pro­tect our fur­ni­ture and cloth­ing, I turned off the fur­nace and sealed off the duct vents, then made an urgent call to the ani­mal con­trol peo­ple. They referred me to a skunk specialist.

Some voca­tion­al choic­es make no sense to me. I can’t under­stand why any­one would strug­gle through med­ical school and then choose to become a proc­tol­o­gist. In Rat­tlesnake Avoid­ance Train­ing, I made clear you couldn’t pay me enough to be a rat­tlesnake han­dler. I’d sign up for those jobs in a heart­beat, though, if my only alter­na­tive was a career in skunk removal.

I smelled the skunk tech­ni­cian before his truck round­ed the turn at the end of my street. Short and over­weight with greasy shoul­der-length black hair and an expres­sion on his face befit­ting some­one on death row, he explained that he would bait a cage with peanut but­ter, trap the skunks overnight, and return the next morn­ing to col­lect them for release in the Ange­les Nation­al For­est. Cov­er­ing my nose with a ker­chief, I wrote him a check and care­ful­ly hand­ed it to him with­out mak­ing phys­i­cal contact.

At dawn, I awoke to enraged screams when the trap door fell, lock­ing the skunks in the cage. Lat­er that morn­ing when the skunk guy threw a tarp over the steel box and car­ried it out to his truck, they screamed again. The cloud of spray envelop­ing him was as thick as coal dust and the stench was … well … there are no words. As he drove away, I won­dered what it must be like to be him, to have no hope of ever going out on a date, mak­ing a friend, enjoy­ing the com­pan­ion­ship of a faith­ful pet, or even com­ing with­in shout­ing dis­tance of any crea­ture with olfac­to­ry glands.

I tell you my his­to­ry with skunks as a long-wind­ed intro­duc­tion to this month’s top­ic of con­tro­ver­sy: Pepé Le Pew. Pepé is a car­toon skunk who starred in 17 Looney Tunes pro­duc­tions, mak­ing his debut in 1945 in Odor-able Kit­ty and win­ning an Oscar in 1949 for Scent-imen­tal Rea­sons. Pepe’s char­ac­ter is mod­eled on Charles Boy­er, a French cin­e­mat­ic heart­throb of the 1940’s. Most of Pepe’s films involve the same plot line. By acci­dent a female cat ends up with a white stripe paint­ed down her back. Pepe mis­takes her for a skunk and falls in love. Bliss­ful­ly obliv­i­ous to his repul­sive odor, Pepé pur­sues the trau­ma­tized cat relent­less­ly while she des­per­ate­ly tries to fend him off.

When I was grow­ing up, Pepé’s one-sided, cross-species love affair made me laugh out loud, but appar­ent­ly not every child found Pepé’s antics humor­ous. In a March 3 NY Times op-ed about the can­cel­la­tion of sev­er­al Dr. Seuss Books, Charles Blow took a swipe at Pepé. “Some of the first car­toons I can remem­ber,” he wrote, “includ­ed Pepé Le Pew, who nor­mal­ized rape culture.”

At first, I thought Charles’s remark about Pepé was as looney as the toons he skew­ered, but in research­ing this post, I dis­cov­ered he is far from alone in regard­ing Pepé a per­vert. In 2000, Dave Chapelle, the come­di­an, in a stand-up rou­tine declared Pepé a “f****** rapist.” He was fish­ing for a laugh and got one, but since then many schol­ar­ly arti­cles have made sim­i­lar dead-seri­ous accu­sa­tions against Pepé.

This from Kirsten Thomp­son, Pro­fes­sor of Film Stud­ies at Seat­tle Uni­ver­si­ty: “Pepé’s nar­cis­sism relies on a strat­e­gy of dis­avow­al so hyper­bol­ic and resilient that his per­for­ma­tive and con­struct­ed mas­culin­i­ty lays bare its ide­o­log­i­cal repres­sion. Here the role of the joke nego­ti­ates the unset­tling ter­ri­to­ry of any cas­tra­tion anxieties.”

I have no clue what that means, but it doesn’t sound good, espe­cial­ly that last part.

Dr. Amber George, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Cul­tur­al Diver­si­ty at Galen Col­lege of Nurs­ing, deliv­ered a more blunt cri­tique, assert­ing that Pepé’s behav­ior con­sti­tutes “sex­u­al harass­ment, stalk­ing, and abuse.” Pro­fes­sor Amy Bar­tow of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Hamp­shire School of Law shared Charles Blow’s reac­tion to Pepé. “Those car­toons made me uneasy as a child, and now I find them tru­ly sick­en­ing. Rape isn’t fun­ny, and it cer­tain­ly isn’t ‘love.’”

After read­ing these arti­cles, I thought maybe I’m the one who’s looney, so I down­loaded Scen­ti-men­tal Rea­sons and watched it again. Okay, appar­ent­ly I’ve grown up a lit­tle. I’ll admit Pepé isn’t as fun­ny to me now as he was when I was a kid, and I can see what offends his detrac­tors. As Charles tweet­ed in defense of his NY Times remark, “Pepé grabs/kisses a girl/stranger, repeat­ed­ly, w/o con­sent and against her will.”

I get that, but I don’t agree with the con­clu­sions Charles and oth­ers draw from it – that Pepé teach­es lit­tle boys no doesn’t real­ly mean no and over­com­ing a woman’s stren­u­ous objec­tions is nor­mal, adorable, and funny.

I real­ize I’m not attuned to the chang­ing social norms. No one would char­ac­ter­ize me as “woke.” In fact, as an old guy who has a hard time remain­ing con­scious for eight hours at a stretch, my polit­i­cal state of aware­ness is, at best, “som­nam­bu­lant.”

But come on, man! Here’s the deal! Pepé’s a skunk. He’s chas­ing a cat. Skunks don’t rape cats. I’m not even sure skunks rape skunks. The cat isn’t afraid of Pepe’s “per­for­ma­tive and con­struct­ed mas­culin­i­ty.” She’s afraid of chok­ing to death on tox­ic skunk mist. That’s the joke – Pepé’s mis­ap­pre­hen­sion that the cat is a skunk who is immune from his stench. Which could nev­er hap­pen in real life because, and here’s the kick­er, CARTOONS ARE NOT REAL! They are named “Looney Tunes” for a reason.

I con­fess, how­ev­er, that I’m prob­a­bly not an objec­tive judge of Pepé’s char­ac­ter. I feel a cer­tain kin­ship with him. When your last name is Oder, you endure a lot of taunt­ing in ele­men­tary school. For a hor­ri­ble few weeks in the third grade, I got sad­dled with the nick­name Stinky. My lit­tle broth­er had it worse. In the sec­ond grade, the teacher assigned lock­er mates using the alpha­bet­i­cal order of their last names. In a cru­el twist of fate, my brother’s lock­er bud­dy became Ron­nie Pugh (pro­nounced “pew”). The Oder-Pugh lock­er took a lot of gas, so to speak. For those of us in the Oder clan, and prob­a­bly for most of the Pughs, Pepé’s per­sis­tent con­fi­dence in the face of an over­pow­er­ing social stig­ma gave us the strength to endure the wit­less slings and arrows of count­less imma­ture stu­pid jerks (not that we took it per­son­al­ly or hold a grudge or anything).

So while I’ve assid­u­ous­ly avoid­ed writ­ing posts about my polit­i­cal views because Pol­i­tics Makes Me Sick, on this par­tic­u­lar con­tro­ver­sy I feel com­pelled to speak my mind.

Let me be clear. On the ques­tion of Pepé Le Pew, I stand with the skunk!

In the dark I saw the sharp bend to the left too late and drove into the turn too fast. I jammed on the brakes and jerked the steer­ing wheel to the left, but the road was slick from the pour­ing rain. The car went straight. The tires squealed and skid­ded off the asphalt. Sit­ting beside me, Randy grabbed the dash­board with both hands as we careened toward a three-rail fence.

Time seemed to shift into slow motion. The car’s hood dipped down as the front wheels plunged into a ditch. My chest slammed into the steer­ing wheel. The hood bounced sky­ward, throw­ing me back in the seat. The car soared out of the ditch, then crashed back down, still speed­ing forward.

The bumper struck the base of a fen­ce­post. With the soil soft­ened by a two-day rain, the blow uproot­ed the post and threw it up on the hood. It came at the wind­shield like a bat­ter­ing ram and hit the plate glass at eye lev­el. A gory image of my decap­i­ta­tion flashed through my mind, but the wind­shield held in place and the post launched into the air and flew over the roof. I watched the seams of wood­en planks sep­a­rate and slide across the wind­shield and heard the bro­ken boards scrape along the sides of the car as it sped through the fence.

The car zoomed over a lit­tle knoll, then pitched for­ward, and skat­ed down a steep slope of soft wet loam. The head­light beams bounced up and down over a green pas­ture that descend­ed to a tree-lined ravine a hun­dred feet below.

I stood on the brake, but it had no effect. The car raced down toward the trees like a sled on an icy hill­side. Twen­ty feet. Forty. Fifty. I put all my leg’s strength into the brake, my knee locked, my fists grind­ing the steer­ing wheel to dust, my jaw clenched so tight I couldn’t breathe.

Six­ty feet. Sev­en­ty. The head­lights fell on a big tree direct­ly in our path at the bot­tom of the slope. Out of the cor­ner of my eye, I saw Randy brace for the impact.

We’re going to die, I thought.

Then it came to me out of nowhere. I turned the steer­ing wheel as hard to the left as I could. The car kept going straight, but it slowed, then coast­ed to a full stop, and stalled out.

I leaned back in the seat and let out a heavy breath. Through sil­ver strings of rain, I stared at the broad trunk of the tree. We were so close I could see the tex­ture of its bark.

“You okay?” I asked Randy.

He lit a Marl­boro with a trem­bling hand and drew hard on it. “I’m alive,” he said quietly.

We sat for a long time with­out say­ing any­thing, the only sound the rain pound­ing on the car’s roof.

When the adren­a­line wore off, it sank into my con­scious­ness that I had wrecked my car, a gray Dodge Lancer my dad bought me for $350, a six-cylin­der stick shift I’d named the Bul­let as a joke because it didn’t go fast. I stared at the igni­tion key dan­gling from the steer­ing col­umn, think­ing about the Bul­let. Some­times, it seemed she almost had a per­son­al­i­ty. Reli­able. Deter­mined. Resilient. I ten­ta­tive­ly reached for the key and turned it. She start­ed right up. I gave her some gas, then eased off. She idled smoothly.

Randy shook his head and grinned.

We got out in the pour­ing rain, walked around to the front end, and stared at the mounds of mud that had piled up at the Bullet’s front wheels to scotch her momen­tum when I’d turned the steer­ing wheel to the left, almost too late.

The fen­ce­post had gouged a big gash in the Bullet’s grille and front bumper and the bust­ed planks had scratched her sides, but oth­er­wise, her exte­ri­or seemed okay. We looked under the hood. There was no vis­i­ble dam­age. I took a close look at the wind­shield. No cracks. Even the wipers still worked.

With Randy push­ing from the front, I backed the Bul­let out of the hole she had dug. Randy climbed in, and I drove her slow­ly up the slope. Halfway up, I heard a cow bawl and I saw ten or twelve dark fig­ures hulk­ing under trees on a ridge to my left. By the time I drove through the break in the fence and eased the Bul­let through the ditch, the rain had light­ened up.

I stopped on the side of the road and looked back at twin trench­es in the mud run­ning through the ditch and the fence and on over the knoll. “I didn’t think I was going that fast.”

“It wasn’t the speed,” Randy said. “You hit the brake too hard com­ing into the turn. It locked the wheels and we slid out of control.”

Randy would lat­er dri­ve heavy-duty trucks in the Army and pub­lic tran­sit bus­es in D.C. He knew what he was talk­ing about. The crash was my fault. The break in the fence was my responsibility.

“The cat­tle will get out,” I said. “We bet­ter tell someone.”

“I saw a farm­house back the way we came,” Randy said.

I turned the car around. We found a mud­dy dri­ve­way run­ning down a hill to the farm­house. The dri­ve­way took us around behind the house where I parked between a pick-up truck and a tractor.

It was past mid­night and pitch dark, no moon or stars in the driz­zling rain, no light in or around the house. Wak­ing up coun­try peo­ple in the mid­dle of the night is a risky propo­si­tion, but at six­teen I didn’t know enough to be afraid.

Randy and I were head­ed toward the back porch when the dis­tinc­tive sound of a shot­gun being racked pierced the silence and a blind­ing light hit us between the eyes.

I froze.

“Who are ya and whad­daya want?” A hoarse angry voice.

“Name’s Ken Oder,” I said, my voice shak­ing. “I ran my car through your fence. Your cat­tle can get out through the break.”

“He’s tellin the truth!” A high-pitched scratchy voice. “I heard the crash!”

The blind­ing light went off. A porch light came on. A bean pole dressed in long johns with a spot­light in one hand and a rifle in the oth­er stood beside a short stumpy woman wear­ing a flan­nel night­gown and armed with a pump-action shot­gun. “Put on your slick­er,” she barked at the old man. “Take ‘em up the hill and fix the fence ‘fore the cows run all over cre­ation.” They shuf­fled through a screen door and dis­ap­peared inside the house with­out anoth­er word.

“Damned if I go any­where with you again,” Randy mut­tered. “Sec­ond time tonight you almost got us killed.”

The old man came out wear­ing a rain­coat over his long johns and threw some planks in the truck bed. We rigged up a tem­po­rary fence that night. I went back in the morn­ing and helped him sink a new post and nail up rails. He wouldn’t let me pay for the dam­ages. “Crazy sumbitch­es run through this fence all a time in a big rain,” he said. “You the only one ever come and told me. We’re square.”

Dad took the Bul­let to a church mem­ber who was an auto mechan­ic. He adjust­ed the front end align­ment, removed a splin­ter from the radi­a­tor, and sealed up the pin­hole. Cost about thir­ty bucks. I nev­er fixed the big dent in the grille and bumper.

Sport­ing her bro­ken nose and bust­ed lip, the Bul­let clocked 100,000 miles after the wreck, tak­ing me every­where I want­ed to go from my high school years all the way through UVA, trips to Flori­da on spring breaks, out to Yel­low­stone Park, down through Wyoming, Col­orado, and Texas, all across the south­east, scores of runs to Mary Bald­win to court my auburn-haired blind date, and sev­er­al nerve-wrack­ing mis­sions to Aiken, South Car­oli­na, try­ing to con­vince her to mar­ry me.

They say a car is just a pile of met­al parts put togeth­er a cer­tain way. Gen­er­al­ly, that’s true, I guess. I’ve owned twen­ty-three cars over my long life. Twen­ty-two of them had no soul.

The Bul­let was dif­fer­ent. She was my steady com­pan­ion through sev­en of the best years of my life. I came of age with her, and I cried when I had to give her up. I loved that old car, and fifty years after we part­ed, I still miss her.