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GO TO DIE  |
Clothespins, anyone?
We've got a skunk here!
By JOYCE KIEFER
of TheColumnists.com
We’ve got yer dead skunk in the middle of the
yard. It’s stinking so strong that our next door neighbor
Suzie lit sticks of incense in her family room so she could enjoy
“60 Minutes” without putting a clothespin on her nose.
You’d think we lived out in the country where varmints take
over any yard that doesn’t have three or four dogs that
mean business. But, no, we live in a nice home on a small lot
in Silicon Valley where the value of homes is obscene by the
standards of the rest of America. No one with a place worth that
kind of money would expect they’d have to get out the shotgun
to pick off a parade of skunks in the back yard or keep a shovel
handy to scrape up the dead ones.
Nature can hand you a big problem wherever you are. You never
know what that might be or what kind of resources you’ll
use to deal with it.
It’s early last Sunday afternoon. The minute my husband
Bill and I get home from our cabin, our next door neighbor Suzie
races over with bad news: A family of skunks had moved into the
shed in her back yard.
Since the shed is next to the fence we share, she suggests we
should be worried, too. She’s seen holes under the fence.
Bill had spent the weekend bat-proofing the front entry way to
our cabin. The bats shoved aside the bird netting he put up,
so the second night he tacked it down tight. He knew that no
bat could make it through this time. With that success he was
ready for bear.
But I’m the one who gets to be backyard skunk scout.
I walk real slow across the back lawn toward the bushes next
to Suzie’s side. I squint my eyes to look under the leaves
without touching them. Suddenly I spot those black and white
stripes. I watch the breeze ripple the long, skunk fur. That
varmint was taking his ease like my yard was his territory.
I’m furious at his nerve but I back away like my feet are
on fire.
Bill creeps in to verify my sighting. Then what does he do about
it? Tell me we’re late for a party! So I figure I have to
call the authorities out to solve the problem.
I call Animal Control. Since this is a weekend, the call gets
transferred to the police department. “Skunk!” I yell.
“Take it away!”
Instead of doing that, the woman offers advice. “Be patient;
Your skunk will move on at night.” Since I still seem anxious,
she gives me the number to call of a wildlife center. I try--and
get a recording that says the office will be open at 10 a.m.
on Monday. I ask myself, would I do if a mountain lion was taking
his ease in my bushes? Hope he keeps sleeping until late the
next morning?
In nearby Palo Alto the police don’t pass the buck, they
just shoot the critter dead. That’s how they took care of
the mountain lion who wandered around a neighborhood just like
ours. But it was a weekday.
We neighbors are left on our own with the skunks to do whatever
we can.
A website on getting rid of these animals says California state
law has no season or bag limit and does not classify them as
endangered or as furbearers or game. Joe, another neighbor who
joins the conversation, figures we’d end up in jail if we
shot them up. He’s a failure consultant, so he should know.
The only thing to do is to get them to move on to someone else’s
place. I suggest mothballs; Suzie had already bought fox urine.
When Bill and I return from our party, we notice our skunk still
lies in the same spot playing possum. I invite Joe and Suzie
to take a look and be real careful. I don’t want them to
get sprayed and then have to wash them down with tomato juice.
It’s getting dark, so it takes them a while to spot the
telltale stripes. Joe’s cat is black and white too, but
this isn’t him. Too quiet.
Joe said we have a dead skunk on our hands.
Now Suzie knew why her family room stinks. Not because of her
skunks but because of ours, who gave off his last blast when
he expired. Now the inside of our own house smells to high heaven--even
with the windows shut.
She invites the neighbors to come over at 8:45 p.m. to watch
Mom Skunk take her nightly walk with her five kits across the
patio. Maybe just four tonight. You can set your clock by this
parade, she says. A half dozen of us wait behind the screen door
in her garage. Our neighborhood doesn’t have block parties,
but this night we start a new kind of social event.
As we wait we hand around the bottle of fox urine. Joan, who’s
a veterinarian’s assistant, agrees it should work, but,
she explains, her expertise is limited to dogs and cats “and
their own particular stinks.” Finally most of us decide
the skunks are either mourning my dead one or driven away by
the counterstink of the fox. They won’t come out. We all
go home.
The next day Susie talks to a live human at Vector Control. He
wants her to tell all of us that skunks are good for the neighborhood.
They don’t eat your tomatoes or vegetables, just your snails,
termites, and rats.
Those kinds of varmints can destroy your whole garden, your house,
and your mind.
Maybe, I start to think, skunks could do us good after all. We
could use one problem to solve another. Instead of trying to
get the skunks to move on, we should lure them into our garage.
A couple of years ago roof rats had snuck inside and chewed away
hundreds of dollars worth of wiring under our brand new car.
They also crawled into the attic and ran back and forth between
the walls. I felt like I was in one of those movies about people
going insane. The Vector Control man actually came to the house
and presented a business card with a rat stamped on it. “Your
big rat can get to be 14 inches long,” he explained, and
suggested we put out traps. Bill did. Each night he gave a victory
yell from the attic- -Got another one”--until we stacked
up an even dozen.
We should have had a skunk.
So maybe these critters do good if you don’t scare them
but dead ones are one big stinking disposal problem. Loudon Wainwright
had that in mind when he composed his ‘70’s hit, “Dead
Skunk in the Middle of the Road.”
What should Bill and I do with the remains under our bushes?
* Flip the body onto the freeway from the overpass and make it
look like roadkill.
* Take the body to the fire station. A friend in another town
offered this suggestion.
* Bag the body and put it in the garbage for weekly pickup. That’s
what Animal Control directed when we finally got hold of them.
Bill goes for the last solution. He tripled-bags the body in
black trash bags and puts it back in the spot where it died.
He’ll wait until the night before pickup before depositing
the bag in the garbage can.
“We don’t want to pollute it,” he explains.
Each nice, warm day the bag swells up bigger.
Hey, Loudon, have I got one more verse for you!
©2004 by Joyce Kiefer. The illustration is from IMSI's Master
Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506,
USA.
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