Skunk encounter, my preparedness ?'d

[doubleh]

Kerosene and coal-oil too.

Common safety sense need apply, of course.

Yeah.... I KNOW! "Cool story, grandpa!" You'll find the coil oil in the cupboard right between the liniment and the mustard poultice.

Todd.

Ahh, coal oil, the universal medical treatment for medical problems large and small many years ago. When I was a little kid I picked up a brick that had a scorpion living on the underside and it took umbrage at me disturbing his home. Rascal stung me on my little finger. Boy, that smarted something fierce and being a little kid I hollered my head off. My mother got a bit flustered too as there has been a local man died after being stung by a scorpion the week before. What did my dad do? He stuck my hand in a soup can that he poured coal oil in. Obviously I lived over it. I had an older cousin that was working in an uncle's grocery store during summer break and sliced the side off one thumb cutting bananas off a stalk. Coal oil was the treatment in that case and he healed nicely although he's had one skinny thumb since then. No doctor was involved in either incident.

The skunks and snakes are only around where they can find something to eat. Last spring I had a skunk digging holes in my drive way under the bug zapper hanging on the side of the garage. I just let him feast on dead bugs and never even thought about shooting him. When the bug supply dried up he left and hasn't returned. I saved a bullet and didn't have to dispose of a dead skunk that had only dug some small holes that I filled by scraping the gravel back in them with my foot.

 

[Zaydok Allen]

I had one living under a boulder 8 feet from my front door I named him Jimmy, and we just gave each other space. He'd be out in the yard when I got home late sometimes. I walked up the street one night from the bar and I ran into him. I called his name and he seemed to understand "Oh, it's the guy." I always said "Jimmy!" when I saw him, and I actually think it conditioned him to my voice. They have crappy eyes so I figured an auditory que was a good idea. We paralleled each other up the street and then he veered off.

I don't have a dog, so there weren't any confrontations. I ran into him a few times unexpectedly, and I got a little concerned. I was actually within three feet of him at one point. He never did spray. He moved on one day when he cleaned out the slugs and grubs. Had a marmot move in temporarily under the same rock on more than one occasion.

 

[bullseye308]

I’ve had to deal with them for years and kill them on sight anymore. Same with any snakes I see in the yard. My kids are dumb and it is just less hassle. I keep a Ruger SR-22 on hand with Colibri rounds and it works just fine except on opossums. Once I learned opossums eat 10,000 ticks a year and don’t get rabies I quit shooting them. Skunks continually get under the house and every time a cat or fox or opossum or armadillo or whatever gets under it they argue and stinky lets one fly. It gets old quickly and next thing you know I’m stuck in a chair outside waiting to see what comes out from under the house.

 

[George P]

Yep baking soda and peroxide. Eating now so all is good buy smell. Guess she sleeps in cage tonight instead of at foot of bed. Tough dog she took a full shot to the mouth.

I had a Norwegian Elkhound that tried to sniff a skunk form behind - got a snootful; since this was in an open field in a city, no guns. Damn if the dog didn't do it again the next week.

 

[edwardware]

I always said "Jimmy!" when I saw him, and I actually think it conditioned him to my voice. They have crappy eyes so I figured an auditory que was a good idea.

They can be conditioned to be quite calm around people. At college there was a platoon of skunks that spent nights cleaning up dropped soft serve all over campus. I have personally nearly kicked a few coming around corners, and I'm sure they were stepped on regularly. They never sprayed, in 3 years.

 

[ericuda]

Final observation on encounter. Need to check my defense weapons and let other family know and understand purpose. Even if don't shoot be knowledgeable enough to bring to me and what to do in a surprise scenario. What happened here ended well, wife got son to help me and took care of dog on a seconds notice.

Give all dogs a nice treat. Thinking back on many dogs and encounters with pissed off raccoons, badgers, bumps in the night or whatever the ole dogs never looked at my backside when trouble arose.

 

[Zaydok Allen]

They can be conditioned to be quite calm around people. At college there was a platoon of skunks that spent nights cleaning up dropped soft serve all over campus. I have personally nearly kicked a few coming around corners, and I'm sure they were stepped on regularly. They never sprayed, in 3 years.

Yep. My mentor had one as a pet when he was a kid. Deodorized of course. Says it was like a cat. I’d love to walk one down the street on a leash.

 

[whughett]

Skunks dislike the smell of ammonia. They won't nest anywhere near it.
Soak rags or a roll of paper towels with ammonia and set it in the corner.
It keeps them away for a long time and is inexpensive to refresh as needed.

Good to know. Definitely going to try that this spring. I’ve a good supply of the high test stuff from fuming oak wood projects.

 

[Phaedrus/69]

Skunks are kind of cool! I've heard they make good pets if you do whatever you do to the scent glands. Pretty smart little critters I guess. Opossums look pretty scary but they're harmless and do eat a ton of vermin. I dunno if anyone here watches Shawn's mousetrap channel but he's always feeding the mice he catches to the critters and it's usually a possum that gets the "treat".

 

[BWS]

This is a mistake mentioning but oh well....

Not gonna say my Dobe(hunting and service dog) isn't gonna get hit again but..... the last time we had an encounter;

Both of us were coming out the side door headed to the truck. We get to the landing and I swear,we both stopped mid step..... looked right at each other and then I got real intense commanding,"get in the house"!

She did.

It was that initial stop,"do you smell that"? "Uhuh" look on both of us that was so funny. Maybe,just maybe at 2 y.o. she might be getting the message. Brilliant dog,in the house,shop,or field. She can go off leash into sLowes,Home despot,and Ace.... just a nice,friendly well trained Dobe. Right up until the "S" word.... that's what the wife calls them.

 

[Trey Veston]

My yellow lab/Great Dane mix never did learn to leave skunks alone. One must have insulted his mother, because he hated and went after every one he smelled.

I believe in the ten years I owned him, he was sprayed four times.

Best solution was a pail with warm water, hydrogen peroxide, Dawn dish soap, and baking soda. One bath made it tolerable, but a second treatment allowed him back in the house.

 

[ApacheCoTodd]

.

Skunks are kind of cool! I've heard they make good pets if you do whatever you do to the scent glands. Pretty smart little critters I guess. Opossums look pretty scary but they're harmless and do eat a ton of vermin. I dunno if anyone here watches Shawn's mousetrap channel but he's always feeding the mice he catches to the critters and it's usually a possum that gets the "treat".

One of my Aunt's actively *tolerated* a skunk that hung around her chicken coop. It never molested the chickens or eggs but the roosters hated it come daylight.

She would put out scraps, lids of milk and the like once she determined that the skunk's fairly benign presence coincided with ZERO botherations from; bobcats, 'coons, foxes or feral dogs, etc... Coyotes were not yet a *thing* there. It eventually grew comfortable with her barn-cats and dogs too. Slept quite comfortably in his own little hootch below the feed bin.

Todd.

 

[doubleh]

Skunks have very good nerves. Unless you suddenly disturb one or attack it, it will just go about it's business of finding something to eat, looking for a mate, or raising it's little ones. Back in the '70's I built a trailer to haul oil well tubing during the winter in our shop which was an antique from the forties. It was just a wooden structure about 24'x 60' with a dirt floor and galvanized tin sides. Over in one corner was a 6'x 8' steel base for down hole packers and anchors sitting on the dirt. Imagine my surprise when I returned from lunch break to find a momma skunk watching her four little skunks rolling and tumbling like kittens beside my trailer build. Momma didn't pay any attention when I opened the door but when I started laughing she turned around and gave me the eagle eye. In just a minute she started patting her front feet and I immediately shut up. That's a sure sign of an agitated skunk. A soon as I quit laughing she setteled down and we watcher her kits play for a few more minutes and than crawl under the packer rack in the corner followed by mom. This little scene played out every day until I finished the trailer. I didn't laugh out loud anymore, momma didn't get agitated anymore, I finished the trailer, and I suppose the skunks went on to lead a happy skunk life.

 

[illinoisburt]

I love dogs, but dogs are dumb when it comes to skunks. Seems like once they get sprayed, dogs go out of their way to molest every darned one of them that comes around. Found the purple Hartz puppy shampoo works really good getting out the smell.

 

[FROGO207]

Last night a Coyote got something in my back yard and started howling. Jambed my feet into my boots and took my Ruger MK ll in hand then ran outside and around the house. Saw a limb moving on a spruce near the ground but that critter gave me the slip but good. Hope it was not one of the neighbors cats.

 

[Sundance1908]

Poor girl. I remember camping and having a skunk family walk through our campsite and I was younger. I remember in the Army I slept in a hammock in Arkansas. In the middle of the night a family of skunks laid down beneath me, feeling the warmth I suppose, and slept. It was an amazing moment for me to be with nature.

 

[Demi-human]

Am I the only one that live traps them and let’s them go peacefully?...

At a “friends” house!

A small bag of cat food will stay dry stood up under an eave for quite sometime after a skunk has discovered it. With any luck he’ll find a good home...

I’ve moved quite a few. Some of them even out to the woods.
I haven’t had my truck, or me, shot yet. Yet.
I always feed em, and let them go quietly. They don’t seem to mind.

 

[FROGO207]

Used to catch them in an old flour barrel in a tip up trap affair. The would never spray as it was such a small area. Onto the trailer and to a local celebritys yard so she could appreciate nature at it's best. Same treatment for racoons in a hart trap, for about 7 years. Got tired of it after a while. Cat food for skunks and bananas for the coons.

 

[Trey Veston]

My neighbor in Arizona was a wildlife rescue guy that had a bunch of cool animals. One was a skunk named Chloe. It's illegal to keep them as pets in AZ, so the owners surrendered her. She was de-scented and cool to interact with.

 

[bayjoe]

Here in southern Colorado January and February is time for skunk mating.I shot 15 last year with one coming up to the yard in the middle of the afternoon, looked like he may have been rabid. This year i've only shot one. I figure the drought probably had something to do with it
Why is it they come around and it seems they spray for no reason.
Did have a badger hanging around for a while till my wife came face to face with him when she walked out the front door.

 

[ApacheCoTodd]

Did have a badger hanging around for a while till my wife came face to face with him when she walked out the front door.

Never minded a badger but for abject destructiveness or getting a taste for chickens and/or eggs.

Todd.

 

[bayjoe]

That little dude wasn't scared of anything. I could walk out the front door and he would be maybe 10 feet away and he would just growl and stare at me

 

[ApacheCoTodd]

That little dude wasn't scared of anything. I could walk out the front door and he would be maybe 10 feet away and he would just growl and stare at me

Isn't that growl one of the coolest sounds in nature?

Todd.

 

[Trey Veston]

Isn't that growl one of the coolest sounds in nature?

Todd.

Not when you encounter it about 100' into a cave in Arizona and round a corner and come within 5' of a giant badger. It was unsettling.

 

[hemiram]

I used to live in the "Skunk Triangle", an area that had, for some reason, inside of it, about 75-200 skunks according to the Ohio DNR. They planned a culling of them, but people blew a gasket over that (Nobody living in the triangle had any real objections, every single night was a horror show for the nose), so it didn't happen. The West Nile virus seemed to take care of the problem, for a while. It killed a ton of the huge Blue Jays and Cardinals, along with Crows and the annoying Pileated Woodpeckers that always picked one of our trees to drill a hole into. The Skunk population dropped dramatically for a few years, and then around 2015-16, the nightly smell began to reappear, along with all the birds, too. The only difference was that the Skunks used to be pretty much 100% of he standard old striped variety, but now about half were the "swirly" type, that I hadn't seen many of in NW Ohio before. They tend to be smaller than the "standard" ones. A friend who still lives in the triangle says that as far as he and his family can tell, the population is back up to what it was 25 years ago or so. His dogs go nuts every night.
The giant, aggressive Blue Jays are back in force, and commonly can be seen killing smaller birds and will attack any person or animal that comes near it's nest when there are chicks in it. My poor dog Blackie got attacked over and over again. My other dogs figured out that going into the right rear of my yard was a bad idea, but she never caught on, and would get pecked a lot.