We've been smelling a skunk around here too. Three Fridays ago, as we were leaving in the morning, we smelled a skunk for the third time in as many weeks. We've been searching many of our rock crevices hoping to find evidence of one! Because we learned that skunks spray as a last line of defense, we're not so wary of finding one.
Or maybe we're stupid.
Skunks are stupid, our study found, because they rely so heavily on its spray that it put off learning how to hide and defend itself as its evolved.
We discovered in our Handbook of Nature Study, however, that it has placed skunk in the incorrect species with weasels and minks. It has its own genus: mephitidae, meaning "one who stinks."
1 comment:
As many as I have encountered in my backyard over the last few years, they have never even seemed too worried to see me. They just look up and go about their business....scuffling around in the leaves or grass or hurrying to go from one end of the yard to another. The worst encounter was one night after dusk we were swimming in the pool and one was nosing around the pool so we didn't want to get out....took a long time because he seemed to be finding something in the sand that the pool sits on.
Anyway, in our experience, skunks pretty much think we are boring.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom
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