It’s been three weeks since the skunk moved into the burrow under our front porch vacated by the armadillo after finally becoming disgusted at the constant harassment meted out by our dog Bosco.
I’m afraid I must report it’s still living there.
I’m not sure, as I haven’t crawled under the house through the dirt to the place where its burrow goes under the brick wall below the porch yet this morning.
Here’s the deal: I’ve made probably eight trips under the house so far, or about one every three days. I am equipped with a bottle of ammonia, various rags, a flashlight and a couple of long sticks. (After the first couple of trips, I just left the ammonia and sticks under the house rather than lug them in and out). I check the brick wall at the appropriate location. If the skunk’s burrow is open, I soak a rag in ammonia, use one of the sticks to stuff it as far down the burrow as possible, loosely pack bricks and dirt into the opening and then crawl out of there as fast as possible.
The key is to loosely pack the dirt. I don’t want to seal the thing inside; that would result in two types of really nasty olfactory experiences. My intent has been to make the experience of living under my house so unpleasant an inconvenient that the skunk decides to trade up to something better, somewhere else.
I believe the thing really did leave for two or three days, but instead of following up on the ammonia treatment, I had to travel, then came back to a few days of wet weather. During that stretch, the skunk evaluated her options and decided there were worse things than occasional amonia rags on the doorstep.
I say “her” because a neighbor’s dog cornered a very young skunk in their yard the other day. Coincidence? Maybe, but my guess is the burrow under my porch was a nursery for a while.
For the short term, my strategy is to continue the ammonia treatments. If I crawl under there and find that the creature did not dig out through the dirt, it means she left the night before and never came back. If the dirt has been removed, she dug her way back in.
I really do not want to move to Plan B. That involves making certain that the skunk has left the hole for the night (skunks are nocturnal) and then going under there in the dark and somehow digging out and temporarily removing a couple of feet of dirt, laying down some stout wire fencing, replacing the dirt and weighing it all down with rocks or bricks, thus sealing out the skunk.
I mean, that would produce the desired results, but I really don’t want to spend an hour and a half rolling around in the dirt at 2 a.m.
Could I trap the skunk? Maybe, but what then? If you come near a trapped skunk, it’s going to spray. If you try to shoot it and don’t kill it instantly with the first shot, it’s going to spray. If you let your dog out at night to harass it, it’s going to spray.
Spraying is bad. Truly bad.
So for now, it’s back to the rags and ammonia.
Update: It’s been raining on and off most of the afternoon. There’ll be no crawling under the house today.
