Skunks

[sweet angel]

Who can give me info?

The past several mornings, I've smelled skunk around my house. Very strong on the garage side of the house.

Do skunks have a particular mating season? Active season?

There doesn't appear to be anywhere on my property where one could hide/live, plus I have a 6' stockade fence around my entire backyard.

I'm always afraid to let my dogs out!

 

[salmoneous]

Skunks tend to be extra active as winter fades and they go out hunting for food. If you have skunks in the neighborhood and they can find food, they will stick around. If you have dogs, I'd suggest two things. First, always make some noise before letting them out. Second, be prepared because they are going to get skunked some day. Be sure to have a odor-removal recipe around, as well as the key ingredients (peroxide, baking soda, soap). Oh, and as always, make sure the rabies shots are up to date.

 

[Jennasis]

Well, from all my research, they are malodorous, french-speaking, and quite enamoured with black and white cats. ;-)

Seriously...my horse got sprayed by one day before yesterday and it wasn't pretty. They stink (like burning popcorn/rubber...yuck!). As far as getting rid of one, I can't help you. But if you can find where it sprayed, you can do a wash with any of the usual home remedies like tomato juice or the baking soda/peroxide/dish soap combo. If you see the skunk, steer clear of it.

PS...we de-skunked my poor horse with tomato juice per my veterinarian. It worked pretty well.

 

[sweet angel]

It's daylight when the dogs go out in the morning -- I thought skunks were more nocturnal.

In any event, I keep meaning to ask the vet for something to have on hand. We have an appointment in a couple weeks -- I have to remember to ask. I really should get the ingredients and keep them handy.

I wonder if I could contact a pest removal place and have them look around.

 

[brerrabbit]

This reminds me over a very funny but somewhat scary story. A number of years ago a good friend of mine and his then 12 year old son were coming home late one night. They lived on a couple of acres on the edge of town and had several cats. The lights weren't on on the porch and as my friend was getting his key in the door what his son thought was one of their cats rubbed against his leg. He pick it up and started petting it, but found out pretty quick it was not a cat. It was a skunk and it sprayed him with the stream hitting him on his cheek. He stunk pretty bad for several days and they had a lot of work to do getting the smell off the porch and off the kid.

 

[cepmom]

It's daylight when the dogs go out in the morning -- I thought skunks were more nocturnal.

In any event, I keep meaning to ask the vet for something to have on hand. We have an appointment in a couple weeks -- I have to remember to ask. I really should get the ingredients and keep them handy.

I wonder if I could contact a pest removal place and have them look around.

skunks are not necessarily nocturnal...found this out one day when I saw a couple of skunks wandering through my back yard around 11:00 am! Called the animal control officer thinking that if they were out during the day, they could be rabid. She assured me they were not rabid because they were not acting funny, stumbling around etc and they were probably out looking for food. She told me one of the skunks looked pregnant and was probably also looking for a place to have her babies, which happened to be under my deck!! I had DH surround the bottom of the deck with lattice so she couldn't get under there any more to have her babies. I do smell them occasionally, but haven't seen any for a while.

They will also dig aorund the grass looking for grubs and other things....it might be too early for the grubs though, I'm not sure. We always get the lawn treated for grubs now to help keep the skunks away (and to keep the lawn looking nice )

 

[sweet angel]

There was just something on Animal Planet over the weekend about a woman who has skunks -- descented of course. They're beautiful, loving animals.

 

[Michie]

Skunks like to eat bugs, so if your property has a lot of bugs, that will attract them. That is why you see or smell them a lot after it rains, because for some reason this brings the bugs out. They like to live under things, like horse trailers, logs and such. I know one time the Dh moved his hunting trailer and family of skunks came out So he keeps it inside the workshop now. If you have dogs, you might try keeping the dogfood inside too.That can attract them

 

[sweet angel]

Skunks like to eat bugs, so if your property has a lot of bugs, that will attract them. That is why you see or smell them a lot after it rains, because for some reason this brings the bugs out. They like to live under things, like horse trailers, logs and such. I know one time the Dh moved his hunting trailer and family of skunks came out So he keeps it inside the workshop now. If you have dogs, you might try keeping the dogfood inside too.That can attract them

My dogfood is in the kitchen. With any luck, the skunks will not be in the kitchen.

On a side note, Salmoneous, that quote in your sig -- that was my son's favorite old cartoon when he was a toddler. That's with the bear in the park picking up the trash, right?

 

[phorsenuf]

There was just something on Animal Planet over the weekend about a woman who has skunks -- descented of course. They're beautiful, loving animals.

We had a skunk (descented) as a pet growing up. Her name was April. She was so small when we got her she fit in the palm of your hand. She was a great pet! The can't see very far so when ever we would take her for a walk on her leash she would be right at our heels. She ate cat food, was litter box trained and loved to play with our Irish Setter. When she got mad she'd do that litlle tail in the air stick her butt out dance and try to spray. Of course nothing came out but it was so cute to watch!

We used to take her camping with us and one time she got out of her cage and went a few sites over and crawled into someones sleeping bag! You can just imagine the fright they had. They ended up grabbing her (not realizing it was a pet) put her in a pillow case and brought her to a field. Thankfully we found her.

If it was still possible I'd get another one. They really do make great pets!

 

[chell]

They are also more active around here right now. My sister and I were talking about it all last week. The sad part is that there are several that were killed on the roads too.

 

[sweet angel]

My dogs were just going crazy barking at the front window. I looked out to see what they were looking at -- a skunk in my neighbor's front yard. Called him to tell him not to let his dogs out, and then watched the cute little guy waddle down the street. It's almost 10 a.m....

 

[snowwhitesmom]

ahhhhhhhhhhh ....the sweet smell of spring!

 

[sweet angel]

It gets better. I called my nextdoor neighbor to warn her as well. Before I could even start, she says, "I know...we started it." She let her dog out the front to "chase squirrels"...well she (the dog) made a beeline across the street and got into it with the skunk and got sprayed. So now they've called Animal Control and the police and are trying to find the skunk because they think the dog injured it (it's a jack russell) and want to make sure it's not rabid.

It really was a cute little guy though!

 

[ilovepcot]

We had a skunk (descented) as a pet growing up. Her name was April. She was so small when we got her she fit in the palm of your hand. She was a great pet! The can't see very far so when ever we would take her for a walk on her leash she would be right at our heels. She ate cat food, was litter box trained and loved to play with our Irish Setter. When she got mad she'd do that litlle tail in the air stick her butt out dance and try to spray. Of course nothing came out but it was so cute to watch!

We used to take her camping with us and one time she got out of her cage and went a few sites over and crawled into someones sleeping bag! You can just imagine the fright they had. They ended up grabbing her (not realizing it was a pet) put her in a pillow case and brought her to a field. Thankfully we found her.

If it was still possible I'd get another one. They really do make great pets!

I had one also, an albino named ROSES. She was precious but only lived a short time due to hypoglycemia that we tried, but couldn't control. Our vet was *horrified* that we had a skunk as a pet! He said that even though she'd been bred over many generations in captivity with skunks who "appeared" to be free of rabies, she could actually be a "carrier" of it and we'd never know until she bit someone and they showed symptoms. He advised getting rid of her because we had a dog and small child at the time. Poor Roses died before we decided what we should do with her, but I will say this. She was very affectionate and loving, would "squeal" when she awoke and saw me each day and I really loved her. Our skunk ate dog food which she washed in her water bowl before eating and would stamp her little feet, then turn around and flip her tail (gorgeous white plume!) over her back and "think" she was spraying you! Very funny to watch.

 

[PlutoPony]

Think I've smelled "eau de skunk" in the air every morning I"ve let my dogs out for the last 2 weeks so they must be more active right now . Since we had an experience with them in our yard last summer (at least there's one less in the world now - don't flame please) I'm getting paranoid about a repeat! Both dogs got sprayed, but the one that got less of it was carrying the dead skunk around in his mouth and no he did NOT bring it in the house like he wanted! Last fall quite a few skunks moved into the neighborhood trying to find places to "hibernate" - so many that animal control ran out of traps and people resorted to buying them and sharing among themselves. Why is this a bigger problem than it used to be??!

 

[msdznyduck]

We had a skunk living under our deck a few years ago (DD was about 3 and called it 'a stunk'.....yep, it did!)
Someone told me to put mothballs under the deck, since they don't like the smell of camphor. We put new ones under there after it rained, just in case. Worked.....haven't seen a 'stunk' around for a few years.