A family of skunks gets relocated
Last week I saw a skunk for the first time this spring, slowly but furtively crossing the road at night and disappearing into tall, still-green grass growing alongside the road. I wondered if it was a mother with offspring hidden somewhere.
It reminded me of experiences I’ve had in the past with skunks. I happen to genuinely like these little black-and-white striped mammals. Yes, they can produce an extremely potent stench when frightened, but they are generally quite placid and amiable if you don’t startle them. I have raised orphaned baby skunks, and found them to amusing and adorable.
A friend in Golden Hills called me once because he had been trapping feral cats in a humane cage trap, and came home to discover his latest catch had the distinctive paint scheme of a striped skunk.
Not only did he have an adult skunk in the trap, there were also some babies milling about the cage who weren’t happy about their mother being separated behind wire.
After making a few inquiries, he had quickly learned that no governmental agency — not Kern County Animal Control, not the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, not the
Kern County Sheriff’s Department, or any animal welfare groups — seem to have any interest in assisting with a skunk problem.
So he apparently decided “I’ll get a hold of Jon Hammond, he cares about wild animals and is dumb enough to mess with skunks.”
My friend thought that the mother skunk, which had been living under his house, had three babies. That seemed like a small litter for skunks — one living under a storage shed at the VFW Hall on West Tehachapi Boulevard several years ago had nine babies — but I went to see for myself.
The skunk kittens were still small, but they were walking around with their eyes open and looked to be about 6 or 7 weeks old. I watched for a few minutes and counted five babies — the family was growing. The mother herself was quite small, so this may have been her first litter. I decided that I would need to catch the babies and move the mother and young to a new location together.
I came back with another trap, this one baited with canned cat food, and in short order had trapped all five babies. And then another little skunk appeared out of the hole underneath the house, so I safely caught that one with a blanket, and added him to the cage with his siblings.
And then, inconveniently enough, another skunk kit made an appearance. We managed to catch it as well and add that one to the cage without allowing any of the others to escape. Even at that young age, skunks can spray their fetid odor but we moved quietly and took care not to startle any of them, and neither mother nor babies unleashed their defensive weapon.
With the mother in one trap and the babies in another, I headed for the mountains to release them in a secluded spot away from homes. I brought along some dry dog food as a house-warming gift and scattered it about at the release site to give them some easy pickings.
I gently emptied the mother and her young out of their respective traps onto some cool green grass in a picturesque setting.
The family was delighted to be reunited, and when last seen they were together in the shelter of a cluster of shrubs, with the babies surrounding their relieved mother in a moving swirl of small black and white bodies.
An hour later, when I returned the original trap that had held the mother, the homeowner told me that he had spotted an eighth baby. We reset the trap over several days, but the straggler never entered it, so it probably wandered off in search of food. It would have still been nursing, but it was old enough to eat on its own. And unlike other mammal babies, even very young skunks are not completely defenseless against would-be predators.
So the skunks got a new home and the resident sealed up the hole under the house to prevent new occupants from moving in. And this story had a happy, unscented ending.
Skunks are common residents of the Tehachapi Mountains, and I always look forward to the next sighting of these interesting little creatures.
Have a good week.