Some years ago when I lived in the suburbs of Chicago I had a chance encounter that went amazingly well. In this particular place, skunks were very common and they had grown so accustomed to people and dogs that one evening when I took my dog out for a walk(same dog as my avatar), unbeknownst to me a skunk was only a few feet from the door. The dog was curious, sauntered over and placed her nose right on the skunk's rear and sampled the aroma while the skunk, completely unfazed, looked over it's shoulder then sauntered off.
I felt quite lucky that evening.
A humorous, but entirely unrelated story from my youth:
An uncle had bought his first new car and was quite proud of it. He'd come to the farm to show my mother his pride and joy and she wanted to drive it. He didn't want to at first, but she eventually got him to agree. Not more than a mile down the road, a skunk popped out on the road and managed to spray the undercarriage of the shiny new car as the skunk made it's way out of this world.