Skunks: The Cosmic Joke

I fully admit that I had no idea what the wildlife in Southern California was going to entail when I first moved out here. You really could have told me that any organism I’d ever heard of was indigenous out here and I would have believed you. Armadillos, macaws, unicorns, whatever. I’d heard that there were coyotes out here, just up the Hollywood Hills north of LA proper, that would roam down the hills at night and feast off of the garbage of the “city.” (I use quotes around the word because LA is not a real city, just an enormous suburb with a downtown area built solely because they needed somewhere to film an urban landscape.) Most of my knowledge about coyotes came to me when I was a kid, absorbing the basics, pretty much what everyone already knows: that they chase birds around the desert, walk upright, retain only a cursory knowledge of explosives, and have extensive lines of credit with ACME Products, Inc. So wild animals like coyotes roaming around LA didn’t seem like too much of a stretch.

But the more time I live here, the more I see that Southern California has just about every ecosystem you could imagine, therefore they have about every type of animal you could imagine. When you only watch movies to learn about the world, as so many Americans do, I think you assume that Southern California is lined with beaches and palm trees. Truth is, the beaches run about 200 ft. from the water, and then you’re suddenly dealing with either desert, mountains or forestry. The really great thing about Southern California are these varied environments. They have everything except polar ice caps and rainforests. Skiing, sunbathing, and driving a car through a giant hole in a tree are all about 90 minutes from each other. It’s amazing.

When I first saw skunks in my backyard, I was at first surprised, but then quickly remembered that if I wandered too far from my house I could be attacked by a mountain lion, so a skunk shouldn’t come as any great shock. For those lucky enough to get up close and personal with a skunk without getting the business end of a chemical attack, you notice right away that skunks are a fun animal to watch. I don’t think they have a very high top speed, but I guess I wouldn’t either if I wielded such power. They have a sort of jolly fat-man gait. They lumber from side to side, almost a waddle. The white stripe (nature’s very own Surgeon General Warning) makes them even more likable, like a ’66 Mustang with that double-stripe down the middle.

Basically, it’s the sort of mammal you could have a beer with. If they didn’t instill such terror in the general populous, I think we could be pretty close friends. But there’s the rub: skunks know their power. They don’t have to run fast. They can take their time eating that cat food I left out there for the stray cat. They can filter through your entire garbage container, picking and choosing exactly what they want like a take-out menu. In fact, the noises they make when they’re outside sound leisurely, like a homeless person rummaging through the recyclables on the curb looking to make a few extra bucks.

I have never seen the skunk in our backyard run away from me. If I’m lucky, it walks away. When I take Daisy the Dalmatian out there to potty in the summer, I have to crack the door and speak loudly: “Beat it, skunks. Comin’ out. Comin’ out, skunks.” On more than one occasion, I’ve had to plant my foot on Daisy’s butt to get her back inside when I see them so she doesn’t get blasted.

Even the single mother skunk who keeps returning with her two little kid skunks is fairly brazen. Like a mother perusing a tabloid magazine at the check-out line while her kids are running all over the supermarket knocking stuff over. The baby skunks would be adorable if they didn’t also carry that same attitude: “My Mom says I don’t have to be afraid of you.”

So they’ve taken over back there. Insult turned to injury when one of them detonated under the house, potentially because of a skirmish with a feline. My wife and I heard a growling down there, clearly a cat, which was then followed by a hissing sound that neither of us recognized. Ten seconds later, that unrecognizable hissing turned into an unrecognizable growling. Still, clearly not the cat. “What is that? Another cat?” “Oh my God, I think it’s a-“

BOOM. Mushroom cloud. We live in one of those old 1920’s bungalows, like a tiny cottage, and they were all heated with those wide floor vents that have at least an inch between each grate. It didn’t take long for the sarin nerve gas to reach the olfactory glands. It was like a Mission Impossible killing.

Only the most unlucky people in the world and several curious dogs that have learned the hard way already know this, but the initial spray from a skunk doesn’t smell like it does when you drive by a roadkill one. That roadkill smell has been diluted by space and time. When one of them goes DefCon 4 under your 500 sq. st. house, it’s more like immersing your head into a vat of hydrochloric acid. It burns. Burns your eyes, your nose, your throat. You cough, you gasp, you feel like you’re going to hurl. I think it took us about three months and 100 scented candles to get the smell entirely out of the air. We never did find that poor cat that decided to start shit with that vengeful skunk, maybe he was dissolved into his original atomic structure.

When a female honeybee stings you, the price for your pain and inconvenience is their own life. There’s almost a poetic nature to the attack. The honeybee is like a buzzing, crawling, literal interpretation of Hammurabi’s Code. They have only one bullet in the chamber, and not the intelligence to use it wisely. Kind of sad.

The skunk is the polar opposite, which is why they’re nature’s cosmic joke. There are no ramifications for a skunk blasting you into a nauseous stupor. They can do it over and over, and they don’t give a Gaddamn what it smells like. It probably smells good to them, like when you appreciate your own potent fart.

Skunks are a bunch of smug sons of bitches, but you have to admire them.