He can tell by the animal’s flattened shape that it spent the night in the cage trying to dig out or arching up to test the metal bars overhead with its webbed toes. Now it is lying down, weary and dull-eyed, head squeezed against the corner, with no appetite for the barbecue-sauce-smeared slice of bread that enticed it into the cage. The knowledge of its doom has spread like noxious gas through its body, leaving the animal with only enough energy for its last stand.He shuts Pete inside the cab, where the mutt writhes with excitement. He takes the lid off the rubber trashcan in the truck bed, releasing the miasma of skunks gone by. Next he grabs a plastic tarpaulin, holding it in front of his face and body as he walks across the lawn to the cage. The skunk scrambles to its feet.Mephitis mephitis, Hoyt thinks.He has a head full of Latin, from prep school, law school, and earlier, when he was a kid and wanted to be a vet, studying the phyla of fauna obsessively, species and subspecies, markings and habitats.
