You’ve lived a VERY sheltered life!
It is not, as some have said here, the worst smell in the world. It is, however, the MOST smell in the world. I think the pot comparison comes closest.
I’ve often wondered how I would get a sample of skunk smell that I could mail to my friend in Sweden. Even after two trips to southern CA, one of them for 5 months, he said that he hadn’t smelled a skunk.
You may have smelled one and not realized it.
Peculiarly, some people (myself included) are not bothered by the smell of skunk, and may even find it rather pleasant. It’s a sort of olfactory color-blindness. Since almost everyone thinks skunks smell terrible, if you’re the exception you may not realize that you’re smelling skunk at all.
I’d describe the aroma as somewhere between musk and lemon.
Lamia, I must say that those have got to be some hellaciously musky lemons you’ve got around your parts.
Balance, you are correct. Mercaptans are used to odorize natural gas. The human nose has an astonishingly low detection threshold for mercaptans.
Count me with those who don’t find it terribly offensive.
Do you remember the first time you got a good whiff of household ammonia? It’s a starling smell. STRONG…ALL ENCOMPASSING. I also relate to pungent and acrid. It fills your entire head.
ccwaterback, you mentioned the smell of a dead body. I smelled dead animals no larger than a dog when I was a child. But I sure did remember it. Fifty years later I smelled it again one day near a field. I did not hesitate to call the police. I knew something was dead. I never did find out what it was. There is no worse olfactory experience. It is unimaginable. But when you do smell it, it so so bad that you know what it is you are smelling, even if it is for the first time.
Stragely enough, skunk stink reminds me of burnt Triscuts.
In small doses, it doesn’t smell that bad. For some reason, the coffee shop in our local Barnes and Nobles smells skunky. Sort of a thick, earthy, acrid odor.
Stronger doses…it’s the intensity that gets you. Kinda like being maced.
This reminds me of one time a skunk got in my parents’ garage (we live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, for the record). We tried everything in the book to get it to leave. The little guy wouldn’t budge.
Instead of just waiting for it to leave, like reasonable people would, my Dad and his buddy get the bright idea to just…shoot it.
Yes, that’s right.
Why they thought the skunk wouldn’t use the polecat equivalent of a Dead Man’s Switch is still beyond me. I’m sure the little guy would’ve ambled out on his own, but nooo…they had to go all Rambo on his ass.
In any case, we waited in the living room. We watched my dad and his friend walk into the garage. 5 seconds later…BANG.
Another couple of seconds later, the two men come staggering out the door, gagging and half falling down, eyes watering and noses running, looking much like two soldiers evacuating a bombed-out bunker. I was pretty young at the time, so my memory might be playing tricks with me, but I thought I could see the stench blowing out the garage door, like a heat shimmer.
In any case, when I went out a few hours later, the air was so thick you could taste it.
Almost twenty years later, on the hottest summer days and (oddly enough) the coldest winter days, you can still smell skunk in that corner.
Heinekin. Skunk weed. They all kind of smell like it. Go to your local pet store and put your nose up next to the ferret cages. That’ll give you a weaker rendition of skunk.
Wow. What assholes. I mean huge, all-encompassing, scum of the earth assholes. Why people will just kill something for the fucking hell of it is beyond me, but people like that aren’t really fit to be called human, in my book.
(my book contains a whole chapter on ‘who doesn’t get to be called human’ by the way.)
Come on over, we’ve got one living under our shed right now. Our dog got sprayed a few weeks ago and she still smells faintly of it when she gets wet. I just bought Nature’s Miracle skunk odor remover to put on her, we’ll see if that helps, the girl at the pet store swore it worked better than anything else.
It is all-encompassing, but it doesn’t make me want to retch like a rotting smell would. It does get in your nose and sinuses though. After giving the dog many baths I could still smell it for the rest of the day. I had to ask people at work if they could smell it on me, but no one else could, it was just lingering in my head. Skunk spray is oily, so it leaves a residue and plain water won’t get it off. That’s why it is so hard to wash out of things.
It is very pungent. I think the comparison to rubbing alcohol is good. It doesn’t smell like that but it has the same almost burning effect when you smell it fresh. In small diluted quantities it is not wholly unpleasant, but it is unmistakable.
I kinda like skunk, too—I don’t find it putrid at all; more like a tangy, sharp, oniony smell. A skunk exploded outside my window as I was going to sleep last night, and it was kinda pleasant, wafting through the bedroom.
I must say, I’m really surprised by the number of posters who don’t find the odour of skunk unplesant. I myself find it bad indeed, and very penetrating, pungent and lingering.
Toronto is swarming with skunks (and racoons). Skunks are almost fearless, knowing instinctively that they have the ultimate defensive weapon. Which is probably why they are hit by cars so often.
If it makes you feel any better, the story has a happy ending. Completely purged the macho “must kill animals” instinct in my father. 20 years later and he hasn’t killed another animal. He’s now the sort of person who rattles the door before he lets the dog out to warn the squirrels away. 
The garage still stinks in bad weather, though…
Better yet, google for skunk, “scratch and sniff” and “sesame street”. I know there’s a weird Sesame Street scratch 'n sniff book out there, I had a copy when I was a kid. I remember one smell was Wet Paint and the very last one was Skunk.
(I work with an Irishwoman and they don’t have skunks! Or possums, squirrels, raccoons, or snakes. OK, I knew about the snakes).
I live across the street from Van Cortlandt Park and near Woodlawn Cemetery, as the Boneyard Crawlers of last weekend will recall. We have bunnies, snakes, chipmunks, woodpeckers, squirrels grey and black, a few pheasants, the occasional stray coyote (yes!) and skunks. Lotsa skunks. There was a period in the 70’s where, every single Saturday night, a giant old skunk (nearly racoon-sized) would waddle majestically across the six-lane road, raid people’s garbage, get scared by something, spray, and waddle back. Saw him a few times and the arrogance of their waddle is hard to describe–they look like plush toys but they know nobody will mess with them. And baby skunks do indeed follow their mommy with their tails up and look like furry little windup toys and are wicked cute.
Every Saturday night, the same thing. There would be the occasional young and foolish skunk that would get flattened in the middle of the week, but AFAIK the big guy died peacefully in the woods.
Most are smaller than that, and I sometimes find them on the sidewalks along the park. I walk slowly and give them a wide berth, and they stand still and follow me with bright little black eyes, not afraid but alert. I warn people coming along in the opposite direction if I see one. Some of the neighbor’s dogs, back before the leash laws got so strict and there were roaming dogs that everybody knew by name in the Bronx, came to grief via skunks, but for most dogs I think it only happens once.
So yep, there’s skunks in the big city, although I suppose you have to venture to The Outer Boroughs to find them. Even four stories up, the smell is terrible.
Oh yeah…
Wang Ka, that is one of the most…vivid…stories I’ve ever read here that didn’t involve pimples. Poor woman!
Lainif, I was thinking of that song too, but I couldn’t remember the writer. Thanks! 
You do realize every American Doper is now earwormed with it, right?
Finally, a question of my own–I’d always thought a “polecat” was some Western critter like a civet cat–do y’all mean just plain skunks, or a certain type of skunk?
Actually, a “Polecat” is an European/African animal:
http://www.bartleby.com/65/po/polecat.html
Skunks are distant relatives.
'm one of those who don’t mind the smell, kind of reminds me of the forest. OTOH this is just the nice drift of smell over a long distance. I wouldn’t want to get hit with a concentrated blast of it.
Anal glands in cats are (according to my vet, anyway) somewhat analogous to skunk scent glands. To me the secretions stink far, far worse.
If someone actually finds a link for skunk-smelling stickers, could you post it here? All I can find is one book with a bunch of other stuff that I don’t really care about.
I have never smelled a skunk before…
'Cause when I saw that thang
I ran for the door
Oh my Pepe, Pep-pep-pep-pep Pepe (Le Pew, ya know?)
Sorry! I’ll just go back to my Smoked Turkey Legs thread and wait there, shall I?
Q