I get a call from the office for skunks under the house in Silver Lake. Speak briefly to the customer, give him an ETA and I’m on my way. Now, with skunks, most people want you to go under their house. They don’t realize that when we go under, if the skunk(s) sees us, they’re more than likely going to spray. Also, skunks are adept at hiding and are not trying to be seen. So we might go under there and not see anything, but the last thing we want to do is seal the opening prematurely and trap (and probably kill) whatever is under there. We don’t seal the openings until we’re absolutely sure that there’s no animal(s) under there. And over the years we’ve developed a few methods to help us do just that.
So I try to explain this to our customer and he doesn’t seem to care about that. I try to reiterate that if the skunks spray, his living conditions are going to get substantially worse. The spray will permeate through the floor and linger for a while. He says to go under. So I go under. Nothing present at first, but there is an opening that leads to what I believe is an addition. So in the foundation, under the house, there is a hole that leads to another crawl space.
I approach the hole with my flashlight and see nothing at first and as soon as I get my body completely through the hole and into the next crawl space, BOOM! A large, adult skunk has its rear-end facing me and is looking back at me to aim and then lets out the worst thing ever known to man – skunk spray. I try to reach out and see if I can grab it by hand and it moves just out of my reach each time.
Remember, my body is head first into this different crawl space. It’s not like I can just stand up and run. I have to spin around on my belly a complete 180 degrees to get into position to go back into the previous crawl space. I finally do that, crawl out from under the house and I emerge from the crawl space empty handed. The homeowner was apologetic but that doesn’t matter. I was covered in spray and had no skunk – but that’s what animal trappers do. We repeatedly do what the customer wants even if it means to get sprayed in the face by a skunk.
I ended up setting traps and we caught the skunk that night and I removed it the next morning. We gave it a few days to make sure that there was no other animals and once I was certain, I closed the entry. So, please listen to your animal trappers! Haha! I don’t like to get into hypotheticals but I can honestly say that the same result would’ve happened whether I went under there or not. Skunk removal can be tricky, but off to the next one!
