Friday, June 10, 2005

baby skunk

Okay.
So we leave one of the garage doors open a crack for Kitty to go in and out until we lock up for the night. Sometimes stray cats will wander in (especially a black and copper female lately) and when we kept the food outside last year we got lots of possums and skunks! We had to draw the line there, and once we found the kittens (a year ago today) we started keeping the food inside.

Okay.
So I went out into the garage to switch loads of laundry, flick on the light and notice the movement of a small animal near the cat food bowl. It's black....but it's not Kitty! IT'S A SKUNK!!! A teeny little baby skunk. It was almost cute until it reared up on its front legs and stuck its tail up. Later, skunkie! I backed in to the house and the skunk ran into the middle of the garage. Kitty was totally not freaked.

You'd figure the skunk would have found his way out within a reasonable amount of time, right? Well, I heard something scratching outside during the night. I figured it was a stray trying to get in. The next day (today) I walked outside and smelled poop. Then I noticed poop by the door. Itty-bitty little pile - too small for my Kitty. Then Kitty and I heard the scratching again. I took my flashlight and went searching. There was the bitty baby skunk curled up on my boxes of china. Little bitty skunk poop and pee all around. So we left the doors open overnight and apparently skunk wandered out. I wonder why we didn't smell it at all? Was it so little that it didn't know to spray when I startled it in the garage? Had it never sprayed before, therefore we didn't smell it? Interesting little encounter.

1 comment:

~*angelle*~ said...

I had baby skunks for a while the summer before last and they didn't really spray so much as they kind dribbled. I think that's something they must get better at as they get larger and need to defend themselves.

totally random comment, I know, I happened upon your blog doing a search on google's blogsearch.