Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind (27 page)

Years ago, when our two sons were quite small, they were playing in an abandoned sugarhouse on a neighbor’s land. Suddenly a movement caught their eye, and they looked out to see an otter humping its way along through the forest, far from any water. More recently, on two separate occasions we’ve seen an otter crossing the field below our house. As previously noted, this is far from water of any consequence. In both instances, the otter slid down every little slope and hummock, leaving a trail that resembled that of a tiny toboggan about eight or ten inches wide.

Otters mate in March or April. Then, following ten or eleven months of delayed implantation, the young are born about a year after breeding. Although as many as five young may be born, litters usually consist of two or three. The den may be a hole in the bank, beneath a fallen tree, or in an abandoned beaver lodge.

Except for the Arctic regions, otters are found throughout nearly all of Canada, Alaska, and the continental United States, except for small portions of the Southwest. As polluted waterways have become cleaner, otters have returned to many of their old haunts and are a fairly common sight.

SKUNKS

If otters are a great favorite with humans, skunks most decidedly are not! “As popular as a skunk at a lawn party,” is a common expression, owing to the skunk’s ability to deploy a malodorous spray as a defensive weapon. Even the scientific name of the striped skunk, our commonest species, delivers this message with double emphasis:
mephitis
comes from the Latin word for a noxious stench, and the name
Mephitis mephitis
is likely to be fervently endorsed by anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a skunk’s ire!

Curiously, skunks have fared better in the world of cartoons than in the real-life opinion of many. In addition to the cute Flower in Walt Disney’s movie
Bambi,
there is the excessively and irrepressibly amorous character Pepe le Pew.

The word
skunk,
like the common names of several other North American animals (e.g., moose, woodchuck) represents the white settlers’ version of a Native American word—in this case the Algonquian
seganku.
During the early days of colonization, rules of spelling were considerably less precise than they are now; one early spelling of
skunk
by a Massachusetts colonist was
squnck.
According to today’s rules of pronunciation, this spelling results in “skwunk,” a variation so delightful that our family regularly uses it.

At first glance, the portly skunk, which normally moves at a most sedate pace, would seem to have little in common with such swift, slender relatives as the weasel, fisher, marten, and mink. Like all members of the family Mustelidae, however, skunks have twin anal scent glands. Unlike the others, though, which can only dribble a tiny bit of scent, skunks can evert their anal glands—about the size of a grape—and discharge a potent blast of an oily, clinging substance with a most disagreeable smell.

Folk myths about skunks are numerous, and almost all deal in one form or another with the skunk’s ability to spray its scent. One of the commonest and most persistent is that skunks can’t spray if their hind feet are lifted off the ground; supposedly, if one can only grasp a skunk’s tail and hoist before the skunk unleashes its scent, the hoister is thereafter safe from the skunk’s quite understandable displeasure. (A related myth holds that a skunk can’t spray if you step on its tail.)

Canadian biologist Chris Heydon, who has worked extensively with skunks, gives heartfelt assurances that this myth is decidedly untrue! Indeed, striped skunks have been known to walk on their front feet and occasionally spray from that position—a behavior typical of their cousins the spotted skunks (see page 166).

The popular perception of skunks is that they’re quick to unleash a blast of spray if disturbed. In fact, skunks are generally very reluctant to spray, and rarely react in haste unless danger seems sudden and imminent. Usually a skunk will face a perceived threat, arch its back, elevate its tail, stamp the ground with its front feet, and shuffle backward. Only then, if the source of danger moves closer, will the skunk use its chemical defense.

It’s fairly uncommon for humans to be sprayed by a skunk. Indeed, skunks seem to be remarkably tolerant of humans and spray us only
in extremis.
There are even credible reports of people who have stumbled over skunks at night without invoking mephitic retaliation.

One bright moonlit night, our older son decided to take a shortcut through the woods from the college library to his dormitory. At one point he leaped over a log and, to his horror, landed beside a skunk! He recalls thinking, “Oh no, it’s all over!” but the skunk, with remarkable forbearance, did nothing. This is only one example of the tolerance that skunks frequently display toward human disturbance.

On another occasion my father-in-law, who kept a couple of cows, went to separate the cream from some milk. When he approached the old-fashioned, crank-operated separator, he was somewhat nonplussed to find a skunk comfortably ensconced beneath it. It became apparent after quite some time that the skunk had not the slightest intention of vacating the premises, so my father-in-law approached cautiously, separated the milk and cream, and departed, leaving an unperturbed skunk, still beneath the separator where he had found it.

There are limits to a skunk’s tolerance for humans, however. Take the case of Old Floyd. Old Floyd was a hired man who worked on our farm long before I was born, but his legend lived on. Something had been stealing eggs en masse from the henhouse, and it was finally deduced that the culprit was a skunk.

Old Floyd was—unwisely—given the task of rectifying this problem, so he set a trap near the point where the skunk was evidently entering the hen house. Something of a commotion near the henhouse became audible the next night, so Old Floyd set out with a long, stout stick and a lantern (this was in the days before flashlights).

Now, Old Floyd was noted for his clumsiness, and soon after he left the house, a far bigger commotion ensued. When my grandfather went forth to investigate, he found that Old Floyd had managed to trip himself with the stick as he approached the skunk, for it was indeed the marauding skunk in the trap. There sat Old Floyd on the ground, stick and lantern beside him, and the skunk in his lap! Like Queen Victoria, the skunk was not amused and had demonstrated its displeasure to the fullest possible extent. Needless to say, Old Floyd was something of a pariah for a considerable period thereafter.

If skunks haven’t been genetically programmed to regard humans as a major threat, the same most emphatically can’t be said for cats and dogs— to the considerable discomfiture of countless pet owners. For example, our daughter’s cat leaped out an open window one night and landed on or beside a skunk. Retribution was swift and impressive!

Depending somewhat on wind direction, skunks can spray about twelve feet. They can also spray two or three times without recharging their scent glands—and a “discharged” skunk is nothing to cozy up to, for it only requires about a half hour to recharge its scent glands.

Yet another myth about skunks is that either the female or the male, depending on whose version one hears, can’t spray. While it’s true that female skunks are slightly less apt to spray than males, they definitely can and will use their scent in self-defense. Besides, who can determine a skunk’s gender until it’s far too late?

One of the worst features of skunk spray is its uncanny longevity. Despite repeated baths in one or more of the recommended antidotes to skunk spray, such as tomato juice or vanilla extract, the odor keeps returning for weeks whenever it’s damp or wet. This is because certain very persistent compounds in skunk spray break down in the presence of water to produce the characteristic skunk odor.

An especially interesting feature of skunk scent is that a small percentage of people actually enjoy it! Evidently this is because some individuals have different scent receptors and perceive many odors—not just skunk—very differently from most people.

Although one encounter with a skunk is enough to deter future attempts by most predators, there is one prominent exception. As previously noted, great horned owls, which, like many birds, apparently have little if any sense of smell, regularly swoop down and kill skunks. Indeed, these fierce raptors are probably the skunk’s only important enemy, aside from humans.

“Polecat” is a common term for the skunk in the United States, but this is a misnomer. The true polecat (the name comes from the French for pullet-cat, which probably memorializes the animal’s depredations on domestic fowl) is a large European weasel known for its strong, unpleasant scent. As in the case of the fisher, European settlers probably began calling the skunk by the name of the nearest European equivalent.

Skunks occasionally have very large litters (the largest, recorded in Pennsylvania, was eighteen), but litters usually range from four to eight. Except in the eyes of devoted skunk haters, few sights in nature are more appealing than a mother skunk with her brood trailing single-file like cars behind the locomotive on a miniature railroad. However, therein lies a certain element of danger, for some people believe the rumor that baby skunks can’t spray. There is a grain of truth in this: baby skunks can’t spray for about twenty-five days after birth. By the time they’re out and about with their mother, however, they should be considered armed and dangerous!

Striped skunks are widespread and common throughout the lower forty-eight states, a little of northern Mexico, and much of Canada. With a maximum weight of about fourteen pounds, and an average closer to eight or ten, they’re about the size of a house cat. Typically, the striped skunk is black, with a white stripe on the head that divides into two broad stripes along the back; these often rejoin to form a white stripe on the tail, as well. Although this is the commonest pattern, skunk markings often deviate from this considerably.

Skunks are primarily nocturnal, although they can often be seen at dusk and occasionally in the daytime. They are truly omnivorous and will eat almost anything remotely edible, as many homeowners can attest after finding a skunk in the garbage can, or their garbage strewn about indiscriminately.

Absent food inadvertently supplied by humans, skunks eat earthworms and grubs, nuts and berries, birds’ eggs, carrion, small rodents, ears of corn low enough for them to reach, and many other things. We could always tell when skunks were roaming our pasture at night because the older, drier cow droppings (or, if you prefer, cow flops, pasture patties, or meadow muffins) had been overturned during the skunk’s search for the abundant earthworms and insects beneath.

The striped skunk is active throughout the winter in the South, but is a semi-hibernator in the North. There it sometimes dens communally, presumably for warmth. Skunks den under buildings, beneath stumps, and often in the abandoned burrows of animals such as woodchucks.

Although skunks in the North will occasionally emerge from their dens on particularly warm winter days, they mostly remain inactive until about mid-February. Then the mating call stirs within, and skunk tracks in the snow and dead skunks along the roadside can be seen with increasing frequency, as skunks travel about looking for a member of the opposite sex. The mating period continues until about the end of March.

A fairly brief period of delayed implantation follows early breedings, though not the later ones, and the young are born in May. Blind at birth, baby skunks are usually about two months old (remember that they can spray after about twenty-five days) before they leave the den to accompany their mother on her nightly forays.

The spotted skunk
(Spilogale putorius)
is our other common skunk. Absent from the East Coast, the Northeast, and parts of the Great Lakes states, this skunk otherwise inhabits Mexico and most of the remaining lower forty-eight states. Far smaller than its striped relative, the spotted skunk ranges from less than a pound to slightly over two pounds. A handsome little animal, it’s really more striped than spotted; the markings on its black coat consist mainly of a series of broken horizontal and vertical white stripes on its back and sides.

Most of what has been said about the striped skunk applies to the spotted skunk as well. However, there are three differences worth noting. First, the spotted skunk has the peculiar method of standing on its front legs whenever it discharges its scent. What evolutionary purpose is thus served remains a mystery, but the creature has survived the ages and prospered.

Second, the scent of the spotted skunk dissipates far more rapidly than that of the striped skunk. Whereas the chemicals in the latter’s spray break down slowly in the presence of water to release the characteristic skunk scent, those of the former release their scent very rapidly.

Third, the spotted skunk will sometimes climb trees if danger threatens, although it rarely does so in the normal course of events. The striped skunk, on the other hand, is no tree climber.

Two other species of skunks barely reach into the United States, although they inhabit Mexico. The first is the hooded skunk
(Mephitis macroura),
which is found only in the extreme southwestern states. Intermediate in size between the spotted and striped skunk, it has a much longer tail than either. It may either be black, with a back that’s mostly white, or all black except for two narrow white stripes on each side.

The hognose skunk
(Conepatus leuconotus)
is also called the rooter skunk. As the name implies, it roots for much of its food with an elongated, somewhat piglike snout that is naked for an inch or so on top. About the length of a striped skunk, it’s less chunky and weighs only two to six pounds. Its entire back and tail are white, making it a very distinctive two-toned animal. Its range extends into about half of Texas, as well as much of Arizona and New Mexico and a small slice of Colorado.

Where other members of the weasel family have claimed a fairly specialized environmental niche, skunks of all stripes (pun intended) are generalists. With few enemies to bother them—at least more than once—they’ve evolved with a leisurely lifestyle well suited to their rather rotund bodies, slow gait, and notably unfussy appetites. Yes, skunks are generally regarded in an unfavorable light and can be a nuisance at times, but they’re actually interesting and generally beneficial animals that devour a lot of potential pests. To anyone really familiar with them, it’s difficult to escape the notion that they deserve better press.