The Downstairs Neighbors — the Saga continues

I believe that I reported previously that we had successfully concluded the eviction and exclusion of our rather smelly downstairs neighbors, the skunks.   If you are interested, you can read all about our trials and tribulations here, here, and here.    As you can surmise from the fact that there are no less than THREE posts on this subject, this has been an ongoing exercise in futility around The Havens.

What we have around here are Striped skunks, who rejoice in the curiously repetitive scientific name Mephitis mephitis.  For some reason, this made me curious about the word “mephitis”, and I looked it up.  It means a noxious gas rising from the earth, and is apparently derived from “Mefitis,” the Goddess of such emanations.   I imagine the concept was born somewhere that was blessed with volcanic vents.   

I find it interesting that our little common striped skunk is named after a goddess in charge of noxious smells that come from the earth.   Apparently, none of her other characteristics, such as eating Japanese beetle grubs, cleaning up detritis and carrion, eating moles, voles and mice, are worthy of being named.   Only her characteristic odor bears noting.

Somehow it just doesn’t seem fair.   

Well, we rejoiced in our successful eviction procedures for approximately twelve whole hours.  Oh, maybe it was longer than that, maybe it was a whole day.   I don’t remember.   Anyway, not long after my last post, while I was still laboring under the delusion that all was back to unpopulated normal under the house, we were sitting in our media room watching a movie, when added to the electronic sound effects of the war going on on screen were some rather emphatic crashings from the crawl space access.   Within seconds, this was punctuated by the subtle aura of skunk rising from below our feet.

Needless to say, Jim rushed right out and opened up the crawl space access to allow the skunk we had unwittingly trapped under the house to leave.  

We consulted with each other about what to do.   Eventually, we decided that the proper way to deal with this problem would be to leave the access open early in the evening, and close it up at bedtime.   The hope here was that the skunk would emerge on fine nights to go get water and food, and would still be out and about when we closed the door behind her.   Eventually, we would hit on the right combination of opening and shutting, and successfully exclude her from the space beneath the house.

If you went and read my previous posts, you will no longer be sanguine about our success in this.   Skunks are persistent, wily, and strong.   After a few days of this ritual behavior, we began to think that we might have succeeded in getting her to move on.    But then, a couple of nights ago, Jim said to me apropos of nothing in particular, “I think that we are too late,   I think I hear small critters complaining under the house.”

“Oh, great!”  I replied, as soon as I figured out what he was referring to.   “I thought skunks were only supposed to be having sex now, and the babies were go show up in April.”  He directed me to the area behind the refrigerator, where there is a hole drilled through the floor for the water line for our non-existent (but potential) automatic ice maker.  I listened hard, but did not hear anything except the refrigerator.    “Maybe you are just hearing the coolant liquid in the refrigerator,” I suggested hopefully.

We really were rather interested in what was going on under the house, however, and thought it wise to make an excursion under there in an attempt to ascertain the truth.  So, the morning following that short conversation,  Jim donned his “crawling under the house with the spiders and mud” coveralls, boots, hat, gloves, got a flashlight, and went off to reconnoiter.   He returned, covered with mud and insulation fibers, and reported that he had not been able to see anything in the areas that he could actually get to.

However, there is the area under the utility room and utility room bathroom, where exists the aforementioned cozy den completely equipped with a nice heater in the form of a thermostatically controlled heat tape wrapped around the water pipes that go through there.   This area of the crawl space is separated from the rest of it by a dry-stacked foundation of cement block.   By the time you get to that part, the “crawl” space is only about 10 inches high, and Jim was not able to get his head through the 12 inch wide hole in the cripple foundation that allows ventilation to occur back there.   So he could not get a visual.   However, he reported that he did not notice any heavy odor of skunk, either.

So, we thought probably we might be hearing mice in the attic, the wind in our brains, whatever.  We hoped that was what was going on, anyway.

All hopes were dashed last night, when Jim said to me, “Ellie, come in here, and be quiet,” from over by the washing machine.   There on that wall is an old propane fired wall heater which we no longer use.  It has a hole drilled in the floor to allow the old propane line to serve it,which also (incidentally) allows access for the dog- and cat- food stealing mice.   Through that hole, and amplified by the metal heat exchange vanes of the heater, we could clearly hear the vociferous complaints of a litter of small mammals whose mother had just got up and dropped them summarily off her teats.   I have heard litters of kittens making the same sorts of complaints numerous times.   Gradually, just as with a litter of kittens, the complaints subsided as the younguns settled down to sleep in a kitten pile.

This morning, I checked the crawl space access hole.  Limned in the sand we sprinkled as a tell-tale at the entrance of the crawl space, I found the prints of the mama skunk.  She went out, she came  home.   Apparently, it had not taken her all that long to figure out our schedule of opening and closing the crawl space, and had adjusted her comings and goings to accommodate our peculiarities.  (Perhaps her presence under the house accounts for the distinct lack of mice in the house lately.  “Oh look!” I can hear her exclaiming to the rental agent.   “Not only a heated den, but one provided with a larder as well.  How convenient!”)

I hope she found plenty to eat, on the nasty sleety night she discovered upon emerging.   What I don’t need is a litter of dead starved babies decomposing under the house in an inaccessible spot.  The floor in the utility room is just fine and does not need to be replaced at present.

I guess that during our fine and warm Christmas season, the skunks got all lovey-dovey and decided it was the right time to procreate.   These babies are two months earlier than expected.   If the weather remains foul, I am going to give her nice cat food to eat, in the interest of maintaining the health of all concerned, even though I don’t really subscribe to the idea that it is a good idea to feed wild mammals.  

And it is nasty out there.   It has been sleeting off and on all morning, complete with thunder and lightning.    The temperature is hovering in the low 20s F (that would be around -6C).   The world is covered in a layer of ice about 2 inches thick.   At least it was cold enough that the precipitation fell in little pellets of ice rather than in freezing rain.

Anyway, at least for the present, I guess the downstairs neighbor stays.    I am a lot of things, but a baby killer isn’t one of them.  Skunks have their place in the world, and I’m hoping we can peacefully (and relatively odorlessly) coexist until the babies are old enough to leave the nest and forage for themselves.  

The Missouri Department of Conservation recommends the installation of a one way door to a crawl space when you are trying to exclude a whole family of skunks.   I suppose we will be forced to employ something of the sort when the time comes.   They also have a nice, simple, odor eliminating treatment published on their site as well.  

Somehow, I get the feeling that we are not alone in our experience!