The joys of country life?

[Scot]

Ah the joys of country life.



Tuesday morning I went directly home from the fire station to build a mount for a fire suppression panel and bottle.



So now it is about 1100 and my wife comes running out to the shop, shall we say, rather excited based upon the fact that I can hear her over a grinder and 29dB earplugs.



As I am running towards the house, she informs me that there is a skunk in the house!



She heard the dogs bark and opened the back door to see what the commotion was all about. It was like a prayer answered for the adolescent female skunk who had somehow gotten inside the cyclone fence. A chance to escape from those mean nasty watch dogs. Well they watch the food bowl anyway...



Before she came to get me, she had the sense to shut all of the doors going to the rooms. She left the front and back door hoping the dogs might chase it out. The dogs, having been sprayed mere moments ago still remembered this fact and wanted nothing to do with the polecat. The part about being sprayed regularly for barking at them was long since forgotten.



The aroma is already intense. So I run inside to see it in the kitchen and decide probably the best method to get it out is to try to coax it out slowly with a broom. At this point it ran past me on its way down the hall. Before I can get the broom out of the laundry room, it comes back up the hall and tries to run into the room with me. Here I am trying to block the thing from entering with my boot like you do a cat all the while remembering that approximately 10% of skunks are rabid.



It finally makes it in and in its excitement manages to give not so much of a spray as a dribble in the laundry room and ... on me... At this point it is merely trying to find a place to hide.



I slowly coaxed it arond the house until it went back out the back door but not until we orbited the house for a few minutes. I finally got it back out in the backyard and got a clear shot at it.



Orange TKO does a pretty good job of cleaning up spray. You find the strong areas one by one.



What fun!

 

[QRTRHRS]

Scot,



Next time (ha) try this. Put a brite light on the skunks eyes. When he freezes, grab his tail and hoist him up. They can't spray in this position. Chuck him out the door. I keep a bottle of saline around for the dogs eyes just in case I have to flush. Also, different formulations that are supposed to help wash out the smell. Dawn detergent works well. There is a product called Nil' Oder in many forms that helps. It has kind of a "bubble gum" smell that will mask the odor as it fades. When it rains though, the smell reappears.

 

[Scot]

Originally posted by QRTRHRS

Scot,



Next time (ha) try this. Put a brite light on the skunks eyes. When he freezes, grab his tail and hoist him up. They can't spray in this position. Chuck him out the door. .

You are not Patrick McManus (humor writer for Outdoor Life) are you?



He has a story where he and one of his buddies were going to get rich selling skunk pelts. The theory was that if you held thier tails down, they could not spray. Then you stuffed them in a tow sack. They were to find out that this did not work in practice.



This story was also on my mind as I was chasing it around the house.



I also figured that if I got sprayed, I would probably also get a bedroom to myself at the fire station. Course, that would probably to apply to home too...

 

[Joe G.]

Skunk in the attic!!

Scot,



A similar thing happened to us about 10 years ago. It was a few days before my oldest daughter's wedding. I was away on a contract so I missed all the fun. My wife heard some moving around in the attic for several days. It sounded like it was pretty big and she didn't want that kind of thing going on during the wedding reception. So she told my son to trap whatever it was. He found an old steel trap and set it near the trap door in the laundry room. The next day while my wife was doing the laundry she heard a loud snap and a bunch of scrambling around. Then the smell descended around her!! My son was at work and I was over 300 miles away. She called the county animal control people. Somehow they were too busy to come out. Then she tried the county fire department. The guy that answered asked her to repeat it. Then she heard a lot of laughing in the back ground. He (a "friend" we have known for some time) had put the call on the PA system. She couldn't convince them to come out. My daughter grabbed all the bride's maid dresses and the wedding dress and left for our gonna be son-in-law's parent's place. She didn't come back. Finally my son showed up. The house was really smelling good by that time!! He put on a hard hat and a rain slicker. Then climbed the ladder in the laundry room with a flash light and a mirror. By that time the skunk had managed to get out of the trap and was long gone. She managed to get rid of the smell with lots of dishes of tomato juice, amonia, and fans with all the doors and windows open. A couple of days of that and it wasn't too bad. The reception went ok with a few funny looks on people's faces. The fire guys still tell the story.

 

[yogibear]

I haven't got sprayed or had one in the house, but have had dogs get hit, give them a bath in tomato juice, that works real good, Vet told me about it.

Larry

 

[DRR-24V]

QRTRHRS Is Your Friend ?

Scott,

LMAO, We have had snakes and possums in the house and with Dogs it's a circus. I would love to see you pick that Skunk up without getting bit.

 

[Joe G.]

Lost snake

This one happened to a neighbor of my wife's uncle in the country near Grass Valley, CA. Their five year old came in the house one day with a little rattlesnake in a mason jar. Naturally, momma lets loose with a blood curdling scream. This scares the crap out of the kid who drops the jar. The jar breaks and the snake runs for it. He was last seen going under the sofa. Worried everybody in the house for a few days.

 

[illflem]

I had a pet descented skunk when I was a kid, good as any cat when raised from young. You can pick them up by the tail without getting sprayed, they have to have their front feet on the ground in order to spray.

 

[QRTRHRS]

I thought it was the back feet? Anyway, back in the mid fifties, my dad and his buddy used to raise skunks and sell them to pet shops in Philadelphia, PA. We used to go to the dumps at night, use the light to freeze them and grab them. No one got bite or sprayed. We would throw them in a burlap bag and for some reason, they would not spray. Dad and his buddy would put them to sleep with either and descent them. Starting with babies, they are indeed very docial creatures. They don't live all that long though.



On a similar note though, a friend left her short haired pointers out one night at 11pm to do their duty. Opens the door and calls them in. Well, of course they come flying in, scent and all. After a few hours of late night scrubbing, they got to bed. Now my friend was in real estate at that time. Couple of days later, she is hosting an open house. Someone mentioned that she thought she smelled skunk. My friend, while embarrassed, kept a business face while "dying" inside.

 

[tmacc]

Seems like everyone has their experience w/ skunks. We use to live on a 400 acre farm while we were building our house. My wife was pregnant w/ our daughter at the time. It was no big deal to let the dogs out at night till they wanted to come in. Well, on a cold winter night the dogs wanted in. They got in the house before I smelled that very particular odor that we all know so well. I managed to get the dogs out of the house, but not before the smell had gotten in. Brings new meaning to the word 'morning sickness' Man, was she sick. The dogs didn't do so well either. Soaking in tomato juice all night. LOL

 

[jodog]

You know your in the country when?

You can pee off the front porch an shoot your gun off the back porch.





OH yeah, with out the cops showing up.

 

[C Schomer]

It took a while for the neighbors to get used to me peein' off the back porch when I moved to the city. I had to educate them on farm life! In the 50's, dad caught 5 orphaned baby skunks that were living in the corncrib and had them fixed. We kept one and gave the rest to cousins. They all stayed wild and bit like gators. The only one that didn't get away was the one my cousins had in Colo. They worked with it a lot but it still bit everybody else. I stayed away from the little *******! My aunt would take it out in the fields and catch grasshoppers for it. Craig