Not only is there a skunk under my house. There is an entire family of Mephitis mephitis (literal translation - "double foul odor") in residence directly beneath my bedroom floor. Amber and I listened to their loving squeals last night. I first realized that we had these new roommates two nights ago. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to some strange thumps on the side of the house. Then I heard what sounded like a cat shrieking. I got up to investigate and then heard grunting, snarling, and movement under our bathroom floor. Visual identification was not necessary as the olfactory evidence was overwhelming. My first thought was that our cat, Harry, who has recently injured one of his legs, had been nabbed by a rabid skunk and was being consumed beneath my feet. I went to the front door and called the cats. Both Harry and Holly came to the door. Harry had lived to see another day.

So in the interest of science and clean air I did a little internet research on removing skunks from under a house. Being that this is baby season I assumed that mommy and daddy skunk had brought their little skunklings with them. So merely trapping the adults would not solve the problem. Then I would soon have rotting skunkling emanating up into the bedroom. Surely that would be worse than the current situation. So I decided to take the approach of coaxing my new skunk family into moving to new quarters. The cheapest approach to this involves mothballs and ammonia. Fight odor with odor. If these materials should fail, for $30 plus shipping I can purchase 3 lbs of granulated fox urine that is sure to do the trick! I couldn't find any mothballs at our local grocery store, but they had ample supplies of ammonia. So I purchased some, poured two quarts of the stuff into one of our sprayers and proceeded to dispense it at all points of access under our house, paying careful attention to the suspicious hole near our bedroom.

This application did not instigate an immediate response. But around 8:30 last night a litany of shrieks arose from the bedroom floor. I'm really not sure what happened. Hopefully they were moving out, but could have just been feeding time or mommy and daddy leaving to scrounge up some dinner. It was certainly the sound of young ones. We did not hear any other noise later in the night. I have another two quarts of ammonia on standby in case there is more evidence of habitation. In the meantime we'll try to enjoy the faint musky odor that still lingers.