JAY – Megan Sullivan loves animals.

Dogs, cats, rabbits.

Snakes, turtles, spiders.

Skunks.

Animals attract her, said the 15-year-old Jay High School freshman. “It’s their cute look.”

But she’ll think twice before picking up a wild skunk again.

When she took one home two weeks ago, it bit her. Now she’s in the midst of a series of seven inoculations to ward off rabies.

The day Megan caught a skunk, she was up in a tree at a nearby ball field when her brother and his friend spotted what they thought was a black-and-white dog.

When the boys realized it was a skunk, they backed away.

Megan was trying to get out of the tree so fast that she almost fell out, she said. She ran up to the skunk, which was lying on the ground, and poked it with a stick.

It didn’t do anything.

Get that out of here’

She bent down near the skunk’s face.

“She didn’t raise her tail,” Megan said, “so I figured something was wrong with her. I picked her up, and she didn’t do anything. She was harshly breathing. I set her in my arms like a baby.”

She was so excited to catch a skunk that she didn’t think of its spraying her. She carried it inside the house with it cradled on her shoulder.

Her mother was not so excited.

“I looked at her, and I pointed, Get that out of here now before it sprays!'” said her mother, Tina Sullivan.

Megan argued, but her mother was adamant. Megan took the skunk, which she’d named Stinky, outside and played with it while her mother was calling the animal control officer. They were directed to take the skunk back to the ball field and let it go there since it hadn’t bitten anyone.

Tina Sullivan took photos of Megan and Stinky for a family album before the skunk was let go. Megan followed it into the woods and covered it with grass to keep it warm, hoping it would stay there.

Teeth marks

She didn’t realize until the next day, when her ankle hurt, that the skunk had bitten her. She thought it happened when it “snatched” at her pants the day before.

She had to get a rabies shot near the four, small teeth marks, as well as in her thigh and her arm the first day she went to the hospital.

The shots hurt worse than the bite, Megan said.

“I don’t know if I would do it again,” she said of picking up a skunk. “I probably wouldn’t. I’m thinking of all the skunks I see that if I tried to go up to them, they would spray.”

But she still loves animals. As Megan talked with a reporter Friday, her hamster, Ringer, crawled up her sleeve and wasn’t seen again until it popped up the collar of her zippered top.

She didn’t flinch.

“I’m not afraid of animals,” Megan said. “It makes me happy being with them and being able to hold them.”