Suited Up!

war_gear_smYes, I was in battle again. A persistent skunk that wants to take up residence in the crawl space. I got rid of it last week, having found one place it broke in. This involved a lot of crawling around on my belly armed with a headlamp (not pictured – this is an old picture) and curses. I’ve done this before… It left. Then yesterday I found a new place it had broken in through and the battle was rejoined. Interestingly, this time it decided to hide after some of the back and forth and I lost track of it for a good while and was about to give up and hope it will feel unsafe with all the lights I’d put on down there (and/or encourage it further to leave by deploying nuclear weapons to match the ones it comes armed with*).

In preparation for this I left open the large access hatch and sprinkled a layer of flour in front of it to detect when the beast leaves, presumably later at night. (The risk is that it leaves and another or several others move in to replace it…) But I did not have to escalate things after all (or do the risky wait). In doing one last check under there (it takes a lot of effort since you cannot move down there save for crawling on your belly) I spotted a tiny bit of its tail that it had not hidden well, betraying its hiding place. Lots of light-flashing and gravel-throwing later, it left (confirmed by one-way tracks).

This is not really how I want to spend my time.

-cvj

*Ammonium hydroxide. See here.

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27 Responses to Suited Up!

  1. Clifford says:

    The Never-ending war…

  2. Anonymous Snowboarder says:

    The long war with Fluffy et al continues… moves, countermoves, battles won and lost.. I sense a Zager and Evans ballad will be written to chronicle this for all history