One summer morning in 1959, the skunk odor in the barn was so strong we covered our noses and mouths with wet handkerchiefs while milking the cows. The stench ruined our breakfast appetites. My twin brother Don and I, then age 7, decided to bury the dead skunk, which our grandmother suspected had been killed by a truck delivering Grampa’s sweet corn to the New Sharon corn cannery.

Growing up on our grandparents’ dairy farm in Mercer, Don and I had seen stillborn calves and lambs. Death is part and parcel of farm life. But the scene of the road-killed mother skunk was unlike anything our young eyes had ever witnessed. Her lone surviving kit bawled while nursing its dead mother. Sprinting back to the farmhouse, we informed Grammy, who immediately phoned Ada and Dick Heald, our farming neighbors. Self-taught wildlife rehabilitators known for their big barn and bigger hearts, the Healds rescued the skunk kitten and buried its mother and siblings. Mrs. Heald bathed the baby skunk in a galvanized tub of warm soapy water, tomato juice, baking soda, and vinegar. They named him Pepe in honor of the Looney Tunes cartoon character Pepé Le Pew. The following day, Mrs. Heald told Grammy, “Pepe takes to bottled goats’ milk like a bear cub takes to honey.”

Within days of having his two scent glands removed, Pepe regularly visited our farm at 6:15 a.m. His timing coincided with the hour that Grampa, Don and I arrived in the kitchen for breakfast after finishing the barn chores. Grammy often served fluffy omelets baked in a cast iron Dutch oven, thick bacon, and hot buttermilk biscuits topped with molasses. Pepe ate with us, roaming between chairs to accept handouts. He wasn’t fond of oatmeal, which further endeared him to Don and me because we didn’t like it either.

When Pepe struggled stepping onto the porch — Mother claimed he was overweight — my brother and I took turns carrying him into the kitchen. He was as gentle and cuddly as a well-behaved house cat, and we loved him as much as the Healds did. He relished soft boiled chicken eggs and snapping turtle eggs unearthed from the Sandy River’s warm banks. After meals, Pepe rolled on his back and remained motionless — a signal that he wanted his throat and belly combed with a dog brush. When we obliged, he closed his eyes, purred, and uttered soft guttural sounds like the ones Grampa made dozing in his La-Z-Boy.

Even my dour, cold Yankee grandmother took a shine to him, but she only grudgingly admitted it. It would take a colder heart than hers not to melt when Pepe wiggled his nose and whiskers or slowly blinked his small, near-sighted dark eyes. Had he been her child, Mother joked, he would have been fitted with eyeglasses. Pepe quickly learned, though, that the barn was off-limits. The one time he stepped into it, our Border Collie’s growl and the barn cats’ hisses sent Pepe scurrying. Even the horses and cows protested his presence by stomping their hooves and vocalizing. Pepe merely shrugged off the rejections and waddled off to dig for grubs in a patch of jewelweed next to the woodshed.

When he dallied returning home, Mrs. Heald phoned Grammy to inquire about Pepe’s whereabouts, “Is Pepe up yonder in your barnyard?” Staring through a kitchen window, Grammy often replied, “He just crossed from our pasture into yours.” But she was just as apt to say, “Pepe is napping on the wool blanket behind the wood cookstove. He’ll be home bumbye.” Fearful that he’d be hit by a vehicle, the Healds erected a simple hand-painted, wooden roadside sign, “Caution: Pepe’s Crossing.” Nearly everyone in town knew him.

Once, when Edwina Brewster — a mean old spinster who dressed in black — arrived at our farm to purchase Grammy’s hand-churned butter and a dozen eggs, Don and I tricked her. Minus the hat and broom, she was the spitting image of the Wicked Witch of the West. As she opened the self-service oak ice box at the end of driveway, we lowered Pepe to the ground behind her and then quietly hid in front of her black 1952 Ford Coupe. She turned, saw Pepe, screamed, and dropped the eggs. When told of the prank during supper, Grampa laughed, but Grammy did not. Although Mrs. Brewster was “a nosy, old busybody,” according to Grammy, she scolded us. Concerned that the incident would harm her egg and butter business, she phoned Bea, our Ma Bell operator, and asked her to spread the word that Pepe was de-scented and that “the boys’ silly prank wouldn’t be repeated.”

When Pepe was 2 years old, his three-day disappearance sent the neighborhood into a tizzy. Herman Redlevske, who paused harvesting his second crop of timothy to search for Pepe, found him barely alive in an abandoned well. Mr. Redlevske extracted the sopping skunk with a jury-rigged extension pole attached to a salmon net. A day later, though, Pepe died on a wool blanket in the Healds’ kitchen. My 9-year-old mind reasoned that Pepe had clung to life in the well long enough to say goodbye to his adopted family.

As neighbors gathered for Pepe’s funeral beneath an oak tree behind the Healds’ barn, my brother and I wore our favorite cowboy shirts and bolo ties. Grammy, who held a grudge like no other, boycotted the funeral. Two days before Pepe tumbled into the well, he poked his head in our henhouse, which upset the chickens and my grandmother. “Two of my best laying hens were so traumatized,” she complained to Bea, “they haven’t laid an egg in three days.” When the last shovel full of soil covered Pepe’s grave, Mother said, “it would be fitting” to transplant two late-blooming stinking benjamins from Grampa’s woodlot to Pepe’s grave, which we did.

During supper that night, our family took turns telling Pepe stories. Don and I recalled how each time we picked Pepe up, he farted. “Without scent glands,” Mother quipped, “his weakened defense system operated on fumes.” Grampa, who farmed with draft horses his entire life, added to the flatulence discussion by sharing words of wisdom: “A farting horse never tires; a farting man is the one to hire.” Grammy, though, had had enough of such talk and shooed us out of the kitchen. Playing checkers with Grampa in the parlor, we overheard Grammy chuckling while she and Mother washed and dried dishes. She then shared a story of the summer morning Pepe pushed open the screen door and entered the kitchen dragging a long strip of toilet paper stuck to a hind paw. Grammy washed his paws with soapy water and admonished him for going behind the barn where the chamber pots were emptied. (Our farmhouse, built in 1820, had no indoor plumbing until 1972 and no electricity until the early 1960s.)

Now 73 and retired, Don and I often reminisce about our youth on our grandparents’ dairy farm. Invariably, Pepe and Bonnie — our beloved border collie — are central to many of our farm stories. Both were cherished childhood gifts.

Ron Joseph is author of Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermit Bill: Memories of a Maine Wildlife Biologist, published by Islandport Press