I know there are skunks around, but I’ve never smelled them in this area. A neighbour said the feral kittens play with them under a structure on the property she rents. But Tonka is a goof and rather territorial, and I think he may make a rash decisions.
Personally, I think skunks are very cute. Someone I worked with said she had one as a pet when she was eight.
We’re having work done on the house, and this morning I saw a bunch of tamale wrappers (corn husks) on the deck. The other day Tonka retrieved half a pork chop that someone had thrown into the brush. I’ve seen some watermelon rinds too. I’ll have a talk with the contractor and ask him to have his guys put their garbage in the trash can.
When I was moving into my house several years ago I was standing in my driveway at night sending a text message on my old Blackberry when I felt a cat walk between my legs. As I was thinking “great, we have stray cats in this neighborhood”, I turned around and saw the white stripe of skunk waddle away from me and go toward the side of my house.
That may have been the same night that my trees got toilet paper by the neighborhood youth. These events weren’t really the welcome to the neighborhood that I was looking for.
I would say that they are pretty nice. A little shy, somewhat curious. They’re nocturnal, so you don’t tend to see them all that often. Most of the time when you do, it’s accidental and they know you’re there, so they’re heading in the opposite direction. They mostly just kind of bumble around sniffing for insects underground. They have a cute little waddle and rarely run, just kind of wander about seemingly aimlessly. They’re pretty little animals as long as they aren’t spraying. When they do spray, it’s like the farts of Satan. Gagging, wretching, crying. It’s not a good experience for anyone involved. If you’re just around where they spray, it’s one of the most wretched scents you’ll ever smell. If you’re the target, then God help you.
[Knock on wood] I’ve never had a bad skunk encounter…I’ve had them wander through my campsite–my policy has always been to sit still and let them do their thing and they will just go on their way. Raccoons are much more troublesome when it comes to campsite intruders.
There was the time I ran over an already-dead skunk on a mountain road. Phew! Luckily there was a self-serve carwash not too far away. Even after power spraying and scrubbing the affected area for a good half hour the smell wasn’t completely gone, so I ended up driving through the mountains rest of the day with all the windows down.
When I was a kid in San Diego, a skunk crawled into the exhaust vent of the dryer of the guy across the street. Oh, the aroma! (The same guy had a kitten crawl into the engine compartment of his 240Z, and it was killed by the fan when he started the car. )
I live in the city but we are just a couple miles straight down a barely used railroad track from a forest preserve so we’ve had skunks in the neighborhood (also opossums, deer, and coyote). Late summer is also when the young skunks start leaving the nest and venturing out into the world and many of them don’t quite have their environment figured out yet. I appreciate that skunks fill an environmental niche so I wouldn’t mind them so much if it wasn’t for the spray. My dog got sprayed a couple times because dogs just don’t seem to learn. My wife got sprayed once by a skunk in the backyard when they startled each other. I came about 4 feet from a skunk while running once but I wasn’t sprayed, fortunately for me. The skunks seem to really like the richer neighborhood that is very close to us because I can smell them there a lot and see them tooling around the lawns and stuff.
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