Scary Smells

Pepe le Pew is back for a repeat visit. He thought he would live under our shed the summer of 2015 but Mike managed to run him off our property and out of town but it appears he is back. What is it about these animals that just love our yard? I know we fixed it up pretty special so we and our friends could enjoy it but seriously? We added a bird feeder to our yard this spring so we would attract melodious song birds not smelly rodents. It’s the only source of food we have back there. Lexie and Mike spent Victoria Day planting all the new plants Lexie felt we needed to round out our repertoire of blooms and that little weasel dug them up to burrow himself deep beneath the shed. If it’s not the deer smorging out on our flowers and new trees then it’s skunks living under our shed.

We also noticed a bit of an ant problem close to the deck. When I arrived on the scene I noticed that mike and the kids had set up a barrier of tables on their sides at the top of the stairs to the deck and they were all standing around mesmerized by the army of ants. I looked at the ants and I looked at the tables and thought out loud to myself ‘surely you don’t think these tables are going to keep the ants off the deck?’ They chuckled and assured me the barrier was to keep the skunk off the deck.

I’ve been reading up on the lifestyles of the skunk and apparently if a skunk is feathering a nest under your shed it’s probably a female getting ready for her babies. So there is a good chance that this is Mrs. Pepe le Pew. Well one of them anyway as apparently skunks are polygamous. Maybe that’s why Warner Bros has portrayed Pepe le pew as the Don Juan of the animal kingdom.

Somebody in our family said ‘well she darn well better not lay her eggs under our shed’. And I replied ‘yeah, if that warm blooded mammal deigns to lay her eggs under our shed I’ll scramble them for breakfast’. I pray there are no babies yet. If Lexie finds out there’s babies she will want to throw them a baby shower. Oy. All I can say is you better be serving lots of tomato juice at the shower.

Mike and the kids stuffed every possible opening in the yard with newspaper and then put bolts on the gate so if skunkypew left they’d know because the bolts would have fallen. Andrew was voted the person to monitor the skunks activity at night since they are nocturnal and so is he. I warned him about getting sprayed. I told him to take an old blanket onto the deck in case the skunk attacked him as he would not be coming into the house after that. He would be sleeping on the deck. The shrunk can spray 6 rounds of ammo and then it takes him 10 days to reload so at least if andrew got sprayed we’d know we had 10 more days to outsmart the little stinker.

Both kids went to check out the bolts at 2am last night. That was clever. They could have both been sleeping out there. However the bolts had fallen down in the direction of the skunk exiting the yard so they closed the opening in the gate and stuffed the paper back in the opening under the shed and went to bed. We think it’s gone but time will smell the story.

I’ll keep you posted.