Home Invasion

By Lynne Swanson

The Easter Bunny didn’t come to my house last year. A mama skunk tending her wee ones under my porch scared him away.

I awoke the Thursday before Easter to teeming rain and a home reeking of skunk. Outside, I couldn’t smell anything.

A quick house and basement check found nothing. When the stench didn’t lessen by noon, I phoned three pest control companies advertising skunk removal in the yellow pages.

At two of them, kind souls listened to my woes. Then they advised they couldn’t help. The third said if I located the skunk, they would remove it. They told me under my porch and deck were good places to start.

They weren’t the least bit interested in hearing that my multiple sclerosis (MS) prevented me from crawling around to look. For some reason, a skunk quest hadn’t been on the list of accessibility needs I considered when I purchased my home over a decade earlier.

Even if I had been able to carry out the search, I certainly wasn’t anxious to come face to face ("or face to rear," chuckled my sister) with my intruder.

Instead, I burned scented candles. When friends arrived to go to dinner, my home was ripe with fragrance of skunk wearing perfume.

My pal Ian didn’t endear himself. "Wasn’t God creative when He made skunks?" Ian reflected reverently. "Isn’t it fascinating how skunks defend themselves without violence?"

I shrieked, "You may think God was creative. You haven’t been living with a skunk all day!"

Good Friday dawned bright, sunny and smelly. A toppled evergreen compelled me to call my handyman. "Could you search for a skunk, too?" I enquired.

This brave fellow was more helpful than pest removal folks. After sniffing around, Mike concluded that the skunk had burrowed with her babes under my porch.

Mike recommended I research how to entice Mama Skunk to exit. While Mama went midnight "grocery shopping," Mike promised to close her entrance. "What about the babies?" I cried. As far as I was concerned, this was not an option.

Surely, witches know all about skunks. So, I called the only real live witch I know. "Boil vinegar," the wise crone instructed for odour. "But it might kill your plants."

I spent Good Friday brewing my potion. By sundown, my throat and nostrils burned. My house smelled like pickled skunk.

Fortunately, Easter weekend outings kept me away from home. One hostess bemoaned the squirrels attacking her tulips. I offered my skunk tribe as predators. She decided to stick with flower-ravishing critters.

I soon discovered that everyone had skunk advice or a skunk tale. "Spread hair," proclaimed my hairdresser, thrusting a bag of shorn tresses into my arms.

"Do you know how hard it is to buy tomato juice on Thanksgiving?" lamented a blind friend whose guide dog had been sprayed on that holiday. My dentist’s receptionist told of using Massengill feminine douche when her cat was showered.

A colleague topped them all. Convinced he smelled natural gas, Dean dialled 911. Fire engines rushed in with screaming sirens -- and identified skunk stench. Garbed fire fighters gingerly tiptoed through Dean’s house seeking his invader.

Years later, when neighbours hear sirens, they say "Dean must have a skunk."

I decided to go high-tech. Internet to the rescue.

I found everything I never wanted to know about skunks on the University of Nebraska skunk website.

Skunks like peanut butter. They may have rabies. Newborns nurse for two months.

Don’t Shoot, warned the website. Shooting releases odour. Then, giving in to the American right to bear arms, they advised exact spots for bullets in the skunk’s spine and brain.

Finally, lilacs replaced skunk aroma, so I assumed Mama and her clan had moved on. "Where did she go?" demanded my mother from her Pennsylvania village. I didn’t know. I didn’t care.
"What did you do? Send her to your neighbours?" my dismayed mother scolded. I knew Mom was appalled at her inconsiderate daughter.

So, on my mother’s behalf, I apologize to those who may have inherited my skunk brood. To Mama Skunk, I merely say...

"Best wishes in your new home."

(Lynne Swanson is a freelance writer living, currently skunk-free, in London, Ontario.)