There have been a few skunk encounters in my lifetime, both in Alberta and B.C. The first one I remember is when I was five or six years old on the farm in Alberta. It was likely late summer. Dad was going to move one of the 12’ x 14’ wooden granaries to a new location where the threshing machine was going to be set up. The threshed grain from the machine would slide directly into the rear window-sized opening of the wooden granary. This was very common on the prairies in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and even 50s.
Dad took me along on the tractor; we had a heavy chain or two, blocks of wood and a crowbar. When we got to the granary, Dad soon had the skids lifted out of the ground with the crowbar and put the short pieces of 2x6 or 2x8 under the skids.
Our farm dog (perhaps it was Ted) was along, running around and sniffing, appearing very interested, with his nose and head under and all around the granary.
The fairly long chain was attached to the short pieces of pipe or steel bar that went through a hole in the front of each skid and then to the clevis in the drawbar of the tractor.
Very slowly, in the lowest gear, Dad released the clutch and the granary began to move, following the tractor. I was on the ground watching.
Suddenly there were black and white animals, like large cats, scurrying around and circling behind the moving granary.
Ted was barking madly and rushed in to attack the skunk family and was immediately sprayed full in his face by the mother skunk. The smell was strong, powerful and overwhelming.
Ted tried to rub his nose and head in the grass, leaving the mother skunk to gather her family of three or four half-grown young ones to amble off together, all with their tails straight up. I remember Dad laughing at Ted’s antics.
Dad stopped and put the crowbar, blocks of wood and me back on the tractor and we moved the granary, without incident, to a new location he had chosen on the west quarter.
Ted smelled bad for days, if not weeks. He wasn’t petted by anyone in our family and was avoided by all. The unmistakable smell of skunk became strongly ingrained in my mind.
In 1948 we moved to British Columbia, living first in a rented house in Clearbrook. Then Dad and Mother purchased a house and barn on five acres at 522 Wellington Avenue in Chilliwack. We only lived there for about two years when our parents purchased the Mayfair Auto Court at 611 Yale Road East, also in Chilliwack. All of the family worked in various aspects of the motel business from 1950 to 1958.
During one of our first years there, I remember that my older sister Gertie saw a skunk disappear under the back porch stairs, putting the fear of God in the whole family. She phoned the RCMP to tell them there was a skunk under the back porch. “Lady,” the officer told Gertie, “I just want you to know that we are just as afraid of skunks as you are.”
The skunk quietly moved away.
My sister Alice’s boyfriend at the time, quite a likeable fellow, took Alice on a date one Saturday night in his dad’s car. Somewhere in their travels or on the way home, the car hit a skunk. It must not have been very late at night because I remember getting our garden hose hooked up close to the car in our backyard. The car very strongly smelled of skunk as her boyfriend laid on the ground squirting water under the front end of the car. The car would have been needed by his family to go to church the next day. Though he washed it very diligently, I’m sure the smell was still there on Sunday morning.
In about 1955, when I was 15, I began taking Vocational Agriculture in high school. Part of taking Agriculture required the student to have an “Ag Project.” Most of the boys were from farms, so their projects had titles like “Six Market Hogs” or “Raising a Dairy Heifer” or “Five Acres of Market Corn.”
What could I have at an eleven-cabin motel?
Dad found a small garden shed or perhaps it was already a chicken house, about 8 feet x 10 feet, which was hauled to the very back corner of the motel, between cabins #9 and #10. We fixed it up to accommodate 20 chickens. My project was called “20 Laying Hens.” I kept records of expenses and income from the sale of the eggs that were sold to the neighbours and the eggs that we used.
I also had a rooster for a time (a rooster at the back of a motel is not a good idea), some Bantam hens and, over time, quite a few pigeons of various kinds. The Bantams’ and pigeons' feed became part of the expense account of the “20 Laying Hens.” I also had some rabbits in two good-sized rabbit hutches close to the chicken house. One year, as another project on the empty lot next to the motel, I had “1/10th of an Acre of Carrots,” but these could all be separate stories.
I noticed what appeared to be rat-type activity under the chicken house. I got a regular, old fashioned gopher trap from someone. Perhaps it was old Mr. Krause, who sold us milk from his Guernsey cow and who also got me started with the pigeons.
I set the trap beside the opening under the chicken house. Looking back, no self-respecting, average-intelligence rat would ever have walked into that trap.
But a skunk did!
The next day there was a skunk with one front foot caught in the trap. It was facing me, trying to pull back, its tail up high.
I watched and thought I could very slowly and cautiously get close enough to step on the trap and set the skunk free— after all, he was facing me and his back end was pointing the other way. I slowly edged closer and closer, reaching forward with my leg to step on the trap. I was just about there when the skunk turned around and sprayed across my pants about knee height.
I backed away, the smell overpowering, overwhelming, nauseating.
I got a ladder and a longer piece of 2x4 and after several attempts was able to push down on the trap, and set the skunk free. It limped away.
The skunk had sprayed across my pants, the stench was powerful. I walked back toward our house and hollered for help, or advice, or I don’t know what! Mother and my sisters came out. I wasn’t allowed to come into the house and had to stay well back. I took off most of my clothes and left them on the lawn. (I think we threw them away or we were told to bury them). I soaked and washed in the tub with lots of soap. The house smelled like skunk, and perhaps I did as well for several days. It was an unpleasant but memorable experience.
We moved back to the farm in Alberta in the fall of 1958. I was 18. We soon had a dog, cat, chickens, pigs, milk cows and later, a horse or two. I even had a pet crow that I brought home from its nest when it was fully feathered, but before it could fly.
It ate bread soaked in milk and table scraps and followed me around or sat on my shoulder. It cawed loudly and a lot. A second cousin, Rudy Hoffman, and his wife Anne, from British Columbia, came to our farm on their honeymoon. They slept in a small tent on our front lawn. Early the next morning, I quietly put Blackie (an especially unique name for a crow!) into their tent. It caused some excitement and a lot of laughs. That incident on their honeymoon was never forgotten.
But Blackie, when he was full grown, flew away and joined his relatives in the wild.
Our closest neighbour, Elwood Willans and his wife Hattie (who was my cousin) lived half a mile south of our farm. They had a tidy yard. Hattie had about 100 laying hens and sold the eggs.
A skunk had somehow got under the floor, I believe, and into the chicken house. It didn’t bother or kill the hens, but ate some of the eggs. The skunk was quite accustomed to Elwood and Hattie and had become quite tame, but Elwood felt they’d had enough.
One day Elwood brought an empty, open-at-one-end, 45-gallon barrel and put it in the chicken house. When the skunk was close to the barrel, Elwood, who had to have been very brave, reached down, picked up the skunk by its tail (apparently skunks don’t let go when they’re picked up by the tail, but I’ve never tried it) and gently put it down in the barrel. He put the barrel on the back of his truck and drove to our place. He jokingly asked me if I wanted a skunk.
“You could take it to the vet clinic in Vegreville; he’d deodorize it for you and you’d have yourself a pet skunk!”
We put the skunk-in-the-barrel on the back of our Dad’s pick up truck and I drove to the Vet Clinic in Vegreville.
I was told they could do it; the cost would be $7.00 (that was in about 1961, and no vet would do that job now, for various reasons. I agreed.
The vet tied a large wad of cotton batten to a hook he made at the end of a piece of wire about four feet long. He poured ether on the wad and put it down near the skunk’s nose. The fumes from the ether were bothering the vet and me peering down, as well as the skunk. It kept trying to move and turn away from the wad. After some time, the skunk seemed to relax and fall asleep. The vet reached down and began to pick it up. The skunk came alive and started to struggle, eyes wide open!
“I think it still needs more ether,” said the vet as he resoaked the wad and put it back near the skunk’s nose.
Finally the skunk was totally limp and unconscious. We laid it on a small table the vet had placed near the back of the truck and he began the operation. My job was to be ready with the ether wad if the skunk began to move or wake up, which it did several times.
The opening of the scent glands is beside the rectum of the skunk. The vet made some small incisions, tied off the tube leading to the scent gland, then removed the scent gland itself. It was about the size of a small hazelnut.
“Boy, I’m glad that’s over!” I exclaimed when he got it out.
“Didn’t you know there's two of them? One on each side of the rectum?” The vet laughed, “If I had known you thought there was only one, I’d have left the other and you’d sure have been in for a surprise!”
He removed the second little bag and put both of them in a small jar of alcohol with a screw-on lid and gave it to me. I took it home and put it on a shelf in the old garage at the farm where it stayed for several years. Then the jar began to smell very strongly, so I buried it somewhere.
I took the deodorized skunk home and made him a pen in the corner of the old farmhouse porch that we had converted into a garage. I named him Jake, he was male but I don’t know how I chose that name. A small wooden nail keg laid on its side, a square piece of plywood with a 5” round hole in the centre was nailed to the open end. I put in quite a bit of straw. The keg became his home and sleeping quarters. A sardine can full of water was always there. As for food, Jake ate just about anything: bread scraps, table scraps, eggs, bacon, and sausage. Jake really liked garlic sausage.
But skunks are nocturnal, so they sleep during the day and are up scavenging or hunting for food or exploring at night. Jake spent most of each day sleeping in his nail keg and most of each night trying to escape or claw or even chew his way out of his pen. He was an adult so he never really got very tame. I used welding gloves to handle him or pick him up because he could really bite.
One day, somehow, Jake got out of his pen and escaped. He was gone. I didn’t mourn his disappearance too much; he was certainly capable of managing on his own.
A few weeks later Elwood Willans contacted me again. He knew that Jake had escaped.
“There’s a skunk under the railroad tie floor in my horse barn,” he said. “He’s got quite a hole and I’ve seen him a couple of times. I think he could be your skunk. Do you want to come over and have a look and see if he’s yours?”
There’s not a lot of difference, colour-wise, between skunks. And to tell if a skunk has been deodorized or not could be a problem.
“I’ll come over and have a look,” I said. “I think I’ll be able to tell if it’s Jake or not.”
I went over and looked at the hole under the ties. I had a plastic bag with me and my welding gloves.
“Jake loves sausage, especially garlic sausage,” I explained to Elwood. “I’ll put a little piece of garlic sausage just inside his hole. If it’s Jake, I think he’ll come and get it.”
Sure enough, very soon a pointy black and white nose appeared inside the hole, then disappeared with the sausage. I put another larger piece of sausage further out from the hole. Jake soon came brazenly out and reached for the sausage. I picked him up.
Elwood laughed hard.
I took Jake back home and fixed up his pen.
Jake liked to lap milk, just like a cat, from the cat’s dish in the barn. With all the barn cats circled around the dish lapping fresh warm milk, I brought Jake to the cow barn and let him loose a few feet from the dish. Jake approached the cats, walking sideways, tail up high. The cats all scattered as he got closer and he lapped the milk by himself, undisturbed. Even the farm dog somehow respected him and kept well out of his way as he approached.
He became gentle and we considered him a pet, but he was not an affectionate or pettable pet. He did not smell skunky, but he had an unpleasant odour and his cage needed to be cleaned every few days.
I got tired of Jake. One day I put him in a box and put the box on the back of the pick-up. I drove to Art Ham’s quarter-section (now it belongs to us) near a large bush area and let Jake loose.
This is the reason vets won’t deodorize a skunk nowadays: people get tired of them, release them and the skunks don’t have their ultimate weapon of defence.
But Jake always continued to act as if he was fully armed, around the dog or cats or me. I think Jake could have bluffed his way out of any situation.
We never saw Jake again, but I hope that he lived to a ripe old age.