Nearly every morning I wake up to the clinging, permeating smell, of a recently angered skunk.

A smell, for those of you who are sadly unaware – that is worse than that of every domestic animal on the planet. Excluding perhaps the delightful stench of pigs wallowing in their own filth.

They take devious delight in exuding their smell at ungodly hours of the night. It is my firm belief that they lie in wait beneath bedroom windows until the hapless humans are fast asleep. Then of course, the inevitable. They only leave when they hear their victims wake up choking and fumbling about to close the window and find a pocket of air, any air, that smells a fraction less rank.

They do not bother tormenting the human world when we are up and at work. No – it is our precious sleep that they rob us of.

Perhaps it is their way of fighting back. The only effort they are capable of making to reclaim the homes that we so carelessly steal, and pave. For we humans tear up and destroy the only world they know. Transforming it into a hazardous wasteland filled with concrete and speeding death traps. Dare I say that we accept the lack of sleep as a minor punishment, for it could be much worse.