Skunks!

By David Sloan

Did you say six baby skunks?” I said into the telephone.

“Yes,” the caller said. While walking near a housing development, the caller had seen six baby skunks that appeared to be orphaned.

I climbed into my truck and drove to where the caller had seen the skunks. Sure enough, in the empty field there were six baby skunks.

I was working for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife. As a summer conservation officer, I dealt with many interesting situations involving animals. But I could tell that this one was going to stand out from the rest.

	These young skunks had no mother. Could they survive with a little help?

Orphans
Mother skunks are protective of their young, but there was no mother in sight. Skunks are usually nocturnal (nock-TURR-null), only coming out at night. But these youngsters were moving about in broad daylight. It was obvious that they were orphans.

But what could a person do with them? They appeared to be four to five weeks of age. They were old enough to leave the den on their own, but were they old enough to take care of them-selves? Looking at the tiny black-and-white figures, I doubted it.

I had been taught not to interfere with wild animals unless it was absolutely necessary. After some discussion, my co-workers and I agreed that the baby skunks needed limited help. Limited help means keeping an animal in the wild while giving some assistance.

But what should you feed six hungry baby skunks?

	Like many young mammals, the skunks were curious. They investigated anything left lying near their den.

Skunks are omnivorous. Like us, they eat both meats and plants. But skunks eat some very different kinds of meats and plants than we do. Although they eat strawberries and apples, they also eat grasshoppers, frogs, bees, and mice. Not a very appealing diet to most of us!

A skunk’s favorite food is grubs. These tiny insect larvae are like ice cream and cookies to a skunk. So with grubs in hand, we drove back to the vacant field.

Warning!
The skunks seemed to pay little attention to us as we approached. This was probably because skunks can’t see as well as we do. If you are more than four feet away from a skunk you are almost invisible to it.

But skunks are far from defenseless. If threatened, they have a very powerful spray that they can shoot out from their rear end. This liquid is stored in two grape-sized sacs under the skin below the tail. Skunks can accurately shoot this spray up to ten feet. And skunks are “fully loaded” and ready to spray by the time they’re a month old.

We stood about twenty feet away and tossed grubs toward the skunks. The skunks seemed to have no idea there were grubs nearby. Unless we did something else, the skunks would starve, even though there was plenty of food.

With some reluctance, we moved closer until we were less than four feet away. The skunks “froze” as they stared at us. Their tails were pointing straight up. This is a skunk’s first warning for intruders to beware. The next step would be to bend the tail until it touches the back and to bend the body into a U-shape so that the rear end faces the intruder. This gets the skunk set for the next step: Fire!

Slowly we reached into the bag and pulled out some grubs. The skunks’ tails seemed to twitch. Were they preparing to spray us? We tossed some grubs on the ground in front of them, and a few tails twitched again. But one brave skunk stepped forward. Soon the others did, too, and a feast was under way.

Wild, Not Mild
We had to be careful. We wanted to help the baby skunks survive, but we didn’t want to tame them. If they became used to us, they would lose their fear of humans. Since they were living near a housing development, that would mean trouble. If these skunks began to raid garbage containers, make dens under houses, or stray into neighborhoods, they would have to be removed or destroyed. So our job was a tricky one.

One thing made the job a little easier. Skunks normally live in abandoned groundhog dens or other ready-made nesting places. They usually stay in a den for only a few weeks before moving on to another one. But since these skunks were without their mother, they continued living in the same den. We easily found
the orphans each day, and they didn’t roam into the housing development.

Over the next four weeks we gradually stopped feeding the skunks. If they were to survive in the wild, they would have to learn to find their own food. Soon the skunks stopped coming out in the daytime. They had become nocturnal.

A follow-up study showed that they had moved into the nearby woods.

In a way, I was sad to see them go, but I was also happy. They had made it. They were still wild creatures, and in a year or two would probably have young ones of their own.