Retired Skunk Whisperer

Last week, to our surprise, an old unwanted guest returned.  There it was, in black and white, eating the cat food on our back porch: A stinkin' skunk.

It had been over six years since the nightmare ordeal we call "The Kitty Missile Crisis".  It was a confrontation that would escalate into the mother of all border disputes.  And to our extreme misfortune, the area under crossfire was our beloved back porch.  It was an epic crisis, that, like the Cuban one, also involved having powerful armed missiles aimed and readied by an edgy and unreasonable warlord, who, at the slightest scare, was willing to initiate a catastrophic launch sequence. 

Before I go any further I should probably tell you that a skunk problem is not something an amateur should attempt to solve on their own.  Believe me, this is sage advise, which our family learned the hard way.  From deep and traumatic personal experience, we advise you to Google this sort of problem  or call in a professional.  Because if you don't know what you are doing, things can go very wrong.  Very very wrong.

Back when the invasion began, the only thing my kids knew about skunks was the information Cartoon Network had indoctrinated them with.  After learning that the two youngest kids wanted to tame "Pepe Lapue" and keep it as a pet, we realized there's a lot of propaganda in those harmless looking cartoons and we were tempted to ban the channel from our cable box.  It took some doing to convince those two that our little skunk was NOT a cute harmless little "kitty". 

The fact of the matter was, that we were involved in a territory dispute, and like anyone in that situation would do, we had to parade a show of force...and as quickly as possible.  But how?   

That's when we commenced on a sadly misguided family brainstorm session.  Here's the sordid tale on "Operation Liberate Porch".

Plan A:  Move the cat food inside.

Result:  This defective plan turned what was meant to be an outside cat into one that  insisted on being fed inside the house, and quickly the cat discovered the luxury of the indoor nap.  Meanwhile the skunks simply declared a hunger strike knowing full well we'd eventually kick the cat back outside and resume outdoor feeding.  Smart skunk.

Plan B:  Lure it away.

result:  Another serious case of wishful thinking.  We began by moving the cat food farther and farther away from the porch in tiny increments only to discover quite quickly that the skunk had, once again,  waaaaay more patience then we did.  Ol' "Pepe" easily outmaneuvered our short attention span and we soon we got too lazy to walk the cat food any farther away.  This plan was all too soon abandoned, which then left us scheming up the mother of all mishaps: Plan C.

 

Plan C:  Shoot the stinkin' thing.

result:  In our desperation to get a handle on our little border dispute it seemed like a reasonable plan.  At this point, should you fall into the category of a Cartoon Network fan who thinks that Pepe Lapu is still a cute little kitty or happen to be a member of PETA, we strongly advise you to skip down to plan D and avoid reading the how Mark loads the gun and I creep outside at dusk to the back porch to create a camouflaged area where he could snipe from.  For those of you on Team Skillman or perhaps members of the NRA, you'll be interested to know that at this point, when I return to the house,  I discover the children had now turned it into a bunker of sorts and commenced charging our two way radios in an effort to set up a command center.  It was then that Mark, dressed in dark clothes, set off on his "assignment" under the cloak of night.   This was a serious mission to reclaim the family's back porch.  Before our fearless and brave sniper left for his hideout, I gave him a quick rally speech.  "Whatever you do honey," I said looking him right in the eyes, "DO NOT MISS YOUR TARGET or you'll be sleeping out in the barn; a lonely man marinating in a stench of skunk."  With that, he crept to the back porch, barricaded himself behind the BBQ, and began the perilous wait.

Behind the glass panes of our "bunker", the rest of us dimmed the indoor lights and sat and waited too.  From our comfortable command post, we wondered if someone should run to the kitchen and make some popcorn but soon enough the little looter appeared.  Mark took steady aim and fired.

BULLSEYE!

Right on target!  Our family came rushing out of the house in wild celebratory fashion shouting victory chants as if we'd just overthrown an evil dictator.  Cheers and high fives were shared and had there been a skunk statue somewhere we'd have smashed that down and waved a family flag from the top of the rubble to complete our conquest.

Then suddenly, without warning, everything went badly wrong.  The air began to fill with a thick haze, a horrific stench filled the air, our eyes began to sting. The kids began to scream and run for the bunker, aka, our fresh smelling home.  As they flung the doors wildly open to escape the horror, the smell engulfed the inside of our house.

Had we Googled our way out of this mess we'd have learned before we committed to Plan C, that when you shoot a skunk, what you really get is a dead gaseous skunk.  A little too late for that helpful tidbit.

Punked by the skunk, we endured the longest night of our lives.  Despite putting a lock down on the down stairs and sequestering ourselves to the second floor, the conditions that night were beyond miserable.  We contemplated getting a motel but knew all too well every motel in town would claim they had no vacancies when they smelled us coming. 

Back to the drawing board.

Plan D:  Trap it.

Result.  Well that was easy.  Within an hour of setting out our newfangled farmer's supply store contraption, we'd trapped the next skunk that paid us a visit.  Why hadn't we thought of that from the get-go?  I tell you why.  Because once you trap a skunk you now have a time bomb in a cage.  Now what?  Seriously.  Now what??  The directions for this metal contraption tell you how to TRAP things but they failed to tell you how to get these vermins back out!  This was going to require another brain storming session which was a scary thought, seeing how our track record on skunk removal thus far, quite literally stunk.

So, how to rid yourself of a caged skunk, hmmmmm.

Option One:  Lasso the cage from far away and drag it away from the house with a very very very long rope.  [A note on lasso-ing...if you're not a born and bred cowboy/wrangler with shelves of trophies to show for your lasso skill-er-y, you're only going to upset the animal inside the cage as you practice roping it.  And need I say that a ticked off skunk is, well, an easy way to get a skunk to T minus 5.]  Option one was soon declared null and void.

Option Two:  Wedge it onto a skateboard with a very very very long board and then tow it with a very very very long rope away from the house.  Connor was not at all happy with this plan because he was the only one in the house who owned a skateboard.  Despite Connor's protests we did learn a very valuable lesson that day:  

Skunks do not like to skateboard.

Option Three:  Right in the middle of discussing what option three could possibly be, which very well might have been surrender and move to another house, Mitchell suddenly looked up at us and said,

"Why don't I just go pick up the cage and put it in the back of the truck?"  He was about ten at the time, a very naive Cartoon Network Indoctrinated ten.  

Hmmmm.  So we shrugged our shoulders and decided to let him give it a try.  We certainly weren't gonna try it, and we were running out of options.  So while Mitchell headed out to the skunk cage, the rest of us safely gathered inside "the bunker".  While we watched from behind the safety glass, Mitchell, without any hesitation whatsoever, bent down and lifted up the cage ever so gently so as not to set off the launch sequence of our furry stink bomb.  He walked over to the truck, set the cage down, put down the tailgate, picked the skunk back up, slid the cage into the back of the truck and slammed the tailgate back up.  Just like that!  Mitch came back to the house and said, "Dad, let's take a drive."  When they drove far enough out of town, Mitchell retrieved the cage and lifted the trap door open and let the thing loose.  He did this successfully with four different skunks!

After that he was legendary.  We dubbed him our  

Wonderboy Skunk Whisperer.

So last night when we discovered a skunk on our back porch we had to wonder...is this a new skunk who's just moved in?  Does he come with a whole clan of stinky family members?  Or, could it be that this is some sort of mushy Disney-inspired movie like "Homeward Bound" in which our little band of skunk friends have made an epic journey back home?  And if it is, this is NOT a happy ending!

So we went out to dust off our trusty old skunk cage and brought it into the house we asked Mitchell, our in-house Skunk Whisperer,  if he was up for another skunk run.  He scowled his face and, with the wisdom of his added years (he's now 17) he looked over at us and said,  

"No way that's crazy!  I'm retired!"

Anyone got a 10 year old who watches Cartoon Network?