These Skunks are driving me insane....

[miraclesrule]

We have a whole family of them that live between my house and my two neighbors house. Right now, they are on my porch lest than five feet from where I am typing. They are always eating my cat food on the porch. They rarely spray their toxic "perfume", but just now I was reading posts and was just getting annoyed at their noisy eating...and then I started typing rapidly in reply to a post and then I started smelling the "smell". I think one of them squirted....ewwwwwwwwwww, it''s disgusting.

I know that you get a "Have a Heart" trap that till catch them and the company takes them and releases them somewhere. I don''t care, as long as i know they are killing them.

I had to do this once, but it was a pain, because I had to keep my cats in the garage for days, and in the meantime we caught a neighbors cat, and then a big possum and it took nearly a week to catch the skunk. Only this time I know there is more than one family member and even though this sounds wierd, I don''t want to be responsible for breaking the family up if only one is caught. How crazy is that?

Has anyone else ever had a skunk problem they had to deal with? What did you do?

 

[VRBeauty]

Miracles: I''ve had a whole family of raccoons visit my backyard, and a mama possum with babies, but never (thank goodness!) a skunk!

Is there any way you can move your cats'' food indoors. My two are indoor/outdoor, but I try to avoid feeding them outdoors specifically so I don''t encourage stray pets or wildlife to take up residence. Outdoor water, yes. Outdoor food, no, unless they''re outside when I leave and I know I''ll be returning home a lot later than usual.

Good luck with the skunk smell. I think I''ll go find a nice hunk of real wood to knock on...

 

[miraclesrule]

Date: 6/27/2008 2:53:55 AM
Author:miraclesrule
We have a whole family of them that live between my house and my two neighbors house. Right now, they are on my porch lest than five feet from where I am typing. They are always eating my cat food on the porch. They rarely spray their toxic ''perfume'', but just now I was reading posts and was just getting annoyed at their noisy eating...and then I started typing rapidly in reply to a post and then I started smelling the ''smell''. I think one of them squirted....ewwwwwwwwwww, it''s disgusting.

I know that you get a ''Have a Heart'' trap that till catch them and the company takes them and releases them somewhere. I don''t care, as long as i know they are killing them.

I had to do this once, but it was a pain, because I had to keep my cats in the garage for days, and in the meantime we caught a neighbors cat, and then a big possum and it took nearly a week to catch the skunk. Only this time I know there is more than one family member and even though this sounds wierd, I don''t want to be responsible for breaking the family up if only one is caught. How crazy is that?

Has anyone else ever had a skunk problem they had to deal with? What did you do?

I meant that to say aren''t killing them. I''m a dunce who hates to proofread my posts before I hit submit.

Mims...isn''t it a joy to have wildlife all around you? When I lived just up the hill, I moved my cats food onto a table. I woke up one night in the middle of the night because I kept hearing a thump, thump, thump, thump...and when I looked out the window, a Mommy Raccoon was up on her hind legs with her front paw reaching as far as she could to tap the plate of food. She couldn''t reach to the point where she could get to the whole plate so she was intently knocking the edge of the plate in order for the food to fly off the table and hit the ground so the baby racoons behind her could eat it off the ground.

awwwwwwwwwww, I thought it was so fascinating, I went around to the kitchen to get a better look at the youngins and opened the top half of my Mr Ed door and then the Mama turned around and starting walking toward me. She was BIGGER up close but so beautiful. I slammed the door shut....very quickly. My heart was racing. They are very pretty animals.

One night I had a fox come up there too. They are another beautiful animal up close. Even baby skunks are precious. They are just a PITA.

I can''t let my cats in because I am too allergic and they will make me sneeze and all that other icky stuff. But I love them to bits.

 

[movie zombie]

it does sound like the area you live in is not a good place to be leaving cat food out: of course its going to attract critters. also, such critters have been known to kiill a cat that has gotten between it and the food. perhaps you could feed your cats indoors?

movie zombie

 

[surfgirl]

Yeah, we have them too and I think you have to keep two things in mind:

1. They were living here first and we came into their territory. They live where they live and you cant do much about that except take steps to not make your property more inviting to them.

2. There are a few things you could try:

A. Dont feed your cats outside, feed them in the garage perhaps? It might take them a bit of time to find the food and want to eat there but if they''re hungry enough they''ll eat.

B. If you have skunks on your porch and in your yard all the time, your cats are elsewhere because skunks and cats are mortal enemies. I had a stray cat/skunk fight under my old apt once and believe me, it''s not pretty, you''d know it if they were both on property simultaneously. So maybe you can install some sort of cat doors in your garage for the cats to come in there when the skunks are around?

C. You can also try coyote piss. Yeah, you can buy it at Walter Anderson''s Nursery in Point Loma and try putting it in copious amounts around your property and see if that helps. You have to keep up with it though and keep the bottles freshly filled otherwise the scent wears off.

We have had problems with skunks for years and they wanted to burrow under our house for a long time. We finally had to brick in the corner where they wanted to dig all the time, and my husband finally drove 2'' pieces of rebar into the ground an inch apart next to the brick because they started trying to dig under the brick. You have to be pro active.

 

[somethingshiny]

There is also something called Critter Ridder. Don''t know who makes it, but I''ve heard people say it works for all sorts of unwanted little guys.


And, as an aside, skunks are very useful in keeping the insect population under control. You may end up with copious amounts of biting and stinging pests rather than just a smelly one.

 

[2Artists]

Oh that is the worst. I feel your pain. We had a neighbor whose door is facing ours get a family of massive raccoons about a year ago. They were living under her house and chewing through her floor. Her floor is fairly thin and it sounded like they were going to come through. They would also all run toward you with no fear which is not good. There were about 4 of them. Huge. The landlord did nada about it for months. It''s a really odd area to get raccoons too. I contacted every agency known to man that rescues and deals with raccoons and no one got back. I was really worried about them. Researched it and got all the info to my neighbor.

They were darn so cute but they carry a lot of flea and parasites and it was not fair for her to be stuck hearing them chew through her bedroom floor at night. Because of this- the area between the houses was covered in fleas so just walking through to get to the door would bring them inside. We noticed the fleas first and were very confused as to where the heck they came from until we saw the raccoons and put 2 and 2 together. I am a little bit clean freak so you can imagine how much I loved that. We did all the manual stuff to get rid of them. I have a big getting rid of flea file on my computer now. We keep it Zen but even so it was a nightmare clean up. Luckily we got rid of the fleas yuck so gross.

I am super greenzo vegetarian animal lover supreme but when one of my tribe ended up bleeding from fleas I had a very fleeting and very uncharitable thought about the raccoons to my shock and dismay. Best luck dealing with those little stinkers.

female half 2Artists

 

[VRBeauty]

Date: 6/27/2008 3:51:56 AM
Author: miraclesrule

Mims...isn''t it a joy to have wildlife all around you? When I lived just up the hill, I moved my cats food onto a table. I woke up one night in the middle of the night because I kept hearing a thump, thump, thump, thump...and when I looked out the window, a Mommy Raccoon was up on her hind legs with her front paw reaching as far as she could to tap the plate of food. She couldn''t reach to the point where she could get to the whole plate so she was intently knocking the edge of the plate in order for the food to fly off the table and hit the ground so the baby racoons behind her could eat it off the ground.

I can''t let my cats in because I am too allergic and they will make me sneeze and all that other icky stuff. But I love them to bits.

The funny thing is, I live pretty much live in the city. Near as I can tell, the nearest "wild"areas are the area under the freeway and an old railyard, both about 1/2 mile from my house. All I can figure is that raccoons and possums, like squirrels, are very adaptable.

Wow.... I have to commend you for having cats even though you''re aseriously allergic to them. It does make it much trickier to separate the cats from the wildlife! I''m not sure a pet door to the food is the answer. A friend of mine had a problem with raccoons that would use the pet doors to get into the house for food! (Yuck....) Many years ago I read about a way to use "tunnels" or hallways with pet doors to keep out neighborhood cats. It involved a setup with two pet doors... you train your pet so they know that that if they''re willing to go through a pet door and through a "tunnel" (actually more like a very short hallway) and through a second petdoor... they''ll be rewarded with food. Most other cats would be deterred by having to go through the tunnel. Not sure if that would work against raccoons or skunks though. I seem to recall from my college-era backpacking days that raccoons are verrrry persistent!

 

[movie zombie]

critters other than the cats will use the pet door..........and may make confrontation between the cats and critters even more dangerous.

movie zombie