There's no place like home.........

Dorothy said those words as she clicked her heels together and tried to get back home to Kansas. This Dorothy may have thought that but I am sure she didn't have two pairs of little red shoes on her feet.

Dorothy it seems, ended her unplanned journey in Mississauga Ontario and promptly was taken into custody Jan 5 2007, after being spotted peering out of a pipe. It is presumed that she fell asleep in a load of piping when the cargo was loaded onto a truck in Torrence CA and then rode unnoticed for seven days without food or water. After she was captured, she was taken to the Toronto Wildlife Centre for her immediate care and plans were underway to deport her back to the U S.

There were a few hurdles to be met, Dorothy is a wayward skunk. Even though the airlines will often return stowaway animals free of charge, someone was thinking fairly clearly when they refused to do so with taking a skunk in-flight. It seems that the word was out that Dorothy needed a ride home and by the end on January, she had a pair of volunteers to drive her south.

Californian radio disc jockey Trace Nealy and her producer Ryan Miller, volunteered their vacation time to pick up Dorothy and drive her home. Her trip home was delayed until paperwork could be set in order for her to legally cross the border this time. When it came through, staff from the wildlife center planned to drive either to Buffalo or Detroit and hand her over to the "brave" volunteers. Plans had also been made for the happy trio to stop at various wildlife centers along the way to assure Dorothy was in good health and eating well.

I am all for deporting illegal immigrants but I also know that I probably wouldn't want to be in that car if something should scare their little striped pal. In case of an accident though, I can only hope they were driving a rental.

For a slideshow, go here.