Shit, son 2, aka the Skunk Tale

Here we get the whole story of the Skunk Drama, including the conclusion, which is fairly tragic all around. If you really love feral skunks maybe skip this blog post because you may find it upsetting.

So, we’ve had something – a cat, we thought – attacking our garbage at night this week. Very displeased, Chris has been talking about making a trap. Turned out he didn’t have to, and it’s probably just as well that he didn’t.

Last night he was outside doing his nightly lockup of his worktruck, garage, etc. when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. “AHA,” he thought, “that darn cat!” He immediately looked around for something to poke it with.

 

Before he found something with which to do poking, he got a clearer look at what was actually a small young skunk. All 6’5” 235lb of him squeaked like a smallish girlchild and hid behind his truck.

After some unsuccessful attempts to yell loudly whisper for me (I’m not sure what I was supposed to do, if I had heard him, but there you go…) Chris steeled himself and peeked around the truck at the skunk.

 

Chris saw the skunk. The skunk saw Chris. The skunk, apparently being hard of hearing, was so startled it fell backwards. Into the window well. And started freaking out, in the way that skunks do best. With a situationally appropriate mild epitaph, Chris turned tail and ran around the truck to the front door, then darted through the house yelling gibberish to me about skunks and the backyard. He quickly closed the back door in an attempt to keep the smell outside. Unfortunately, the window well in question was right beside the intake vent for our heating/cooling system.  He eventually plugged the intake vent from inside, but suffice it to say, it does not smell like cookies baking in my house.

 

I tucked Nicole into bed – it was around 8:30 or 9 at this point, and we’d just finished moving her bed back into her room – and we both spent the next hour or two on our phones trying to deal with his dilemma, once it became clear the skunk was really and truly stuck in the window well. As you can imagine, the skunk was in quite a tizzy about this as well, and every once in a while the household was treated to a new wave of his, uh, panic.

As the previous post mentioned, apparently nobody in authority – or not in authority, for that matter – really wants to deal with a skunk trapped in a window well. While I can totally understand why that is, that kind of left us in a bit of a pickle. The closest thing to a solution rather than just genuine sympathy and ‘good lucks’ was Wildlife Conservation, who suggested an exterminator might be up to the task. That doesn’t seem very Conservation-ish to me, by the way… Regardless, in the end it was our Boys In Blue who wound up deciding, between downtown and the local precinct, how the situation would be remedied. After they established that a) it was kind of hilarious/horrifying, and b) every avenue had been explored and nobody seemed willing to step in and rescue the skunk (who would have clearly been very grateful, and would have bestowed a wave of, uh, gratitude on his hero) the skunk wound up meeting his end fairly early on in life.

 
RIP, skunk. I’d feel more for him if he hadn’t scattered garbage all over my yard a couple of times and if my house didn’t smell strongly of skunk at 2:30 in the afternoon the next day. Awesomely enough, I was out and about to escape the odour in my house and could smell a skunky aroma. I quickly established –and my mom confirmed - that it was coming from me, and I never even saw the darn thing. I just stink from being in the house.

So, anyone want to come over for coffee???  

…no?