The charms of country life wear thin when skunks are involved. How can something so cute be equipped with such an unbelievably offensive defense mechanism? It really is nature’s way of saying, “Don’t touch.”

Out here in Dow, we are inundated with many things – possums who eat out of our cat dish, packs of wild dogs that frighten our cats and kids, coyotes that stroll across the driveway in broad daylight. Add to that list of natural wonders a skunk, which has clearly taken up residency somewhere near the house. There must be a glut of skunks in this area. Anyone who has driven on Route 109 recently has surely noticed them, as there have been at least three skunk road kills on that highway in the past two weeks alone. We see them scampering across Bartlett Road near Bethel Lane and laying dead in the road in front of Wock’s.

Unlike other road kill, a skunk leaves a calling card, which resonates long after he is gone. You drive past the corpse and, even a week later, the smell lingers, permeating your car just long enough to start pointing fingers at the kids. “What is that smell?!”

There are so many skunks in this area that Oskar has started calling it the Skunkmuda Triangle. Like those mysterious and treacherous waters, the smell of skunk is inescapable.

But anyone who has been skunked, really skunked, knows that is beyond foul. Three times in the past week we have been awakened from deep sleep in the middle of the night by an odor so offensive and so pungent that it burned our eyes and throats, driving us from our beds to seek refuge. We thought the skunk was in the house, but it was obviously outside, below our bedroom window. By the time Dave got downstairs, got the shotgun, loaded the shells (kept separately for safety, of course), the critter was gone, though the smell lingered for hours.

The skunk comes calling at all hours. Last week. I had a big family dinner party to celebrate Dave’s birthday and the skunk paid us a visit. As we sat around the table visiting, the smell came upon us. Dave grabbed his shotgun and a flashlight and set out to find it. But the wily critter had escaped, but not before spraying my car, which now smells like skunk and cat pee, an intoxicating combination. Great.

It could be worse, I suppose. My friend Margaret, who lives in Nashville, told me about devil squirrels living in her attic. She said she has trapped, shot, poisoned and repelled hundreds of squirrels and has hired two different professionals to try to solve the problem, all to no avail. They keep coming back. She’s even ordered coyote urine off the Internet to repel them (isn’t the Internet great? Who knew you could get coyote urine?).
The devil squirrels have gotten so bad she has had to start taking sleeping pills to get some rest at night. Now that’s bad. Squirrels are just about the only critter we don’t have a problem with, but given the wild kingdom out here can they be far behind? I’m going to go ahead and get me some coyote urine, just in case.

Stephanie Abbajay is a columnist for the Jersey County Journal. She lives in Dow.

March 14, 2007