Skunkalicious

We have skunks. Lots of them. For a while this spring they were making their home underneath our front porch. We knew because sometimes our house would smell like a cross between skunk & dirty diaper. I don't know why but it did. Mostly down in the basement which is near an opening which goes into the area under our front porch. There was also considerable digging on each side of the front steps and Steve saw a skunk out there one night.

We (well, Steve) plugged up the holes in front with a combo of dirt, sand and boards and the skunks, being the wanderers that they are moved on.

Last year Iko, one of our cats, was sprayed by a skunk during a bbq that we were having (boy was that fun). Needless to say we've become a bit wary of skunks.

Well, they returned in full force last week. There is a mama and a baby that like to hang out in our yard. They also like to hang out in our neighbors yard who like to leave garbage near their garage. I think they like our yard because we left the back corner a bit 'jungly' and the cats love it so why wouldn't the skunks!?

So, we've been making sure the cats are in by nightfall because I'm pretty sure they'd try to 'defend' their territory and then we'd end up in tomato bath hell again.

A couple of nights ago I was standing outside talking on the phone to my FMIL (we have NO reception actually IN the house which is oh-so-annoying). As I was out there wandering back and forth on the side walk the stench of skunk came to me. STRONG. Gaggingly strong. I thought I was going to throw up. I quickly ended the phone conversation, confirmed that the cats were indeed inside and we ran around closing all the windows to try to prevent pure skunk saturation. Ugh. Nothing like 90 degrees in the house and closing up all the windows! Luckily it passed.

Last night at about 4:15am both Steve and I woke up at the same time to another gaggingly strong scent of skunk! It was disgusting and since we had fans blowing in, we got the full force. Again we had to run around shutting windows and Steve went out to investigate (not sure why....). We think possibly a dog had been sprayed as to coincide with the awful stench we had a dog barking and barking and barking which doesn't normally happen.

After about 15 minutes or so the smell began to subside and we were able to re-open the windows and put the fan back in (thank god because it gets pretty stuffy pretty fast...) and go back to bed. Luckily I didn't have too much of a problem getting back to sleep.

This morning as I walked to the garage I could smell the distinct odor again. I'm pretty sure the smelly-incident happened in the alley very near to our house. Ick. I can only hope that it doesn't happen again. My olfactory senses can't handle much more.