It was the summer of 2009. My mother was taking Max, our
dog, out for his nightly stroll when she saw some sort of movement near the
front porch. She watched something with a dark, fluffy tail disappear into a
small hole dug under the cement stoop on our front porch. The hole had always
been there; it was dug by previous generations of chipmunks. We like chipmunks.
Max likes to bark at them. Incessantly. When my mother saw the dark fluffy
tail, though, she knew it wasn’t a chipmunk. What else could it have been? A
black squirrel? Possibly, because we have both black and brown squirrels in our
neighborhood. But squirrels don’t really burrow into holes. Was it a cat?
Probably not. That hole wasn’t big enough for a cat. There was another option:
a skunk. It could be a freaking skunk. A nasty, rabid, odorous,
chipmunk-evicting polecat.
“Crap,” yelled my mother, as she walked in the house.
“What are you crapping about?” I asked, not sure if I really
wanted to know the answer.
“I think there’s a skunk under the porch.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
We both decided to look from the outside after we put Max
inside so he wouldn’t scare the unidentified animal away. He’s a terrifying,
twelve-pound Shih Tzu. We stared at the hole under the porch and just waited.
Suddenly, a small nose peeked out. A small, pointed nose. A small, pointed,
black nose. A small, pointed, black nose with a white stripe. Step one: verify
identity. Check.
“Ok, well what’s Step Two?” I asked, “Panic?”
Surprisingly, we didn’t panic. My mother and I went back in
the house, through the garage of course, and googled “skunk under porch” and
waited to see what came up. The first item said, “skunks under a porch can be
notoriously difficult to remove.” Fantastic. Not just difficult, but
notoriously difficult. The other solutions mainly consisted of putting smelly
things under there to try to drive the skunk away. That might not work if it
was a female skunk with babies, though, as she would be protecting them. We
weren’t about to make it worse by even considering the fact that it could have been
a pregnant skunk.
We started trying some of the suggestions from the internet.
Rag soaked in bleach? Check. The skunk came back.
Sprinkling cayenne pepper all over the porch? Check. The
skunk came back. And the squirrels were unhappy with that one too.
Cover the hole with rocks? Check. The skunk dug around them.
Fabulous.
Here’s where this story turns into a classic Principi-level
fiasco.
We decided to ask my dad for some “chemical assistance.” He
has a Masters in Chemistry and works for a pharmaceutical company so he knows
some cool spells. Why anyone would want to get a degree in Chemistry, much less
go for the Masters, is beyond me but we put his array of skills to good use. We
still didn’t know whether we were dealing with a stubborn male skunk, a
stubborn female skunk, or a stubborn, pregnant female skunk. We were not
completely convinced the skunk wasn’t
a pregnant female because she would not give up, but we had no way of finding
out. So we waited for her to leave for the evening and decided to shove rags
soaked with bleach and ammonia into
the hole. Yes, we made chlorine gas. We waited until dark and watched the hole
for signs that she had left. Skunks are huge partiers and leave home at dusk
each night so we didn’t have to wait very long once it got dark. Around 9:30pm,
she left and my parents brought out their supplies of horror: a gallon of
bleach, a gallon of ammonia, a large rag, a broomstick handle, and a
flashlight. My mother was in charge of the flashlight as she is not a chemist.
My dad put the rag in front of the hole and poured bleach on
it. He began to pour on the ammonia while my mother helpfully shouted, “Hold
your breath! Hold your breath!” He didn’t exactly remember to hold his breath
and stumbled across the driveway coughing and retching. He may or may not have
thrown up on the driveway. Yeah, he gassed himself a little bit.
Oh, did I mention throughout this whole gaseous kerfuffle my
three guy friends and I were watching everything unfold from the front window?
We laughed. A lot.
My parents collected their tools and went back into the
house, hoping they didn’t see any tiny skunks emerging from the hole clutching
their tiny throats and brandishing their tiny fists in anguish.
There was no movement, no screaming, no nothing. If there were baby skunks in there, my
parents were now murderers. Whoops.
We checked the hole the next morning. There was a new hole
dug on the side of the Rag of Possible Death. The skunk had come back, dug a
new hole, and was now either inside laughing at us or hanging out somewhere
outside where it was less stinky. We covered the new hole with mulch so we
would know if she came or left.
The next day, there was nothing. The day after? Nothing. The
mulch was left untouched. We win!
Then it was time to make cement. My parents bought a bag of
instant cement from Home Depot, mixed it up, and closed the entire underside of
the front stoop. If there was actually anything in there, it is now a
sarcophagus. Sorry, chipmunks. You can go live under the back stoop.
The best part about this story? It has an ambiguous ending. We were never sure
if the skunk was male or female or whether there were actual skunk babies
involved. It could have been a really determined skunk who wanted to live under
the stoop and found ways around our other methods. Or, we killed a bunch of
baby skunks. All I know is that skunk should be proud he or she made a chemist
puke. When he came back inside after gassing himself, my dad said, “Uhh, when
you guys leave, try to avoid the right side of the driveway. I threw up a
little bit.”
