Most of my close encounters are of the stripey kind. When I was the assistant ranger at Popham Beach State Park, one of my duties was to fill in for the night ranger on his two nights off. This included going through the changing areas and cleaning up all the debris and pulling the trash bags. One evening, I was a bit later getting to the trash than usual and it was getting kind of dark. I leaned over to pick up a potato chip bag and found myself eye-to-eye with a young skunk. "Nice skunk" I murmured softly as I backed out of the doorway very slowly, still bent over.