Skunk patrol

There are skunks in my neighborhood.

I should explain that my corner of suburbia is an old one. My house was built in 1955, and the newer part of the neighborhood was built up in the early 80’s. Rather than a developer buying an acreage and rubber-stamping dozens of identical, cheaply made paperboard mcmansions, this one grew slowly, more organically. As a result, there is a lot of empty space that a developer would have min/maxxed into oblivion.

It’s this empty space that has various overgrown brush, groves, and well placed drainage creeks. Some of them are better maintained than others; none of them are on any public land, it’s all a part of someone’s property. But the uneven and mismatched shape of the plots of land don’t lend themselves well to further development, so they remain wild green space.

And skunks live there, among other creatures. The only ones bothering *me* are the groundhogs that would raid and destroy my garden, but enough chicken wire put a stop to that. Either way, that’s a different story.

Skunks. They’re nocturnal, so being out during the day is normal as any other mid latitude deciduous climate. But when it starts to get dark, they start to come out.

It doesn’t bother me. I see one, I just go the other way. But it has this added benefit that really keeps the neighborhood shining: no miscreants. Yea I said it. My town doesn’t have any wandering ne’er do wells looking for crimes of opportunity. No, the bored teenagers see the skunks and decide to stay in.

Though it does make the walk from my front door to the car early in the morning a bit treacherous. I’ve resorted to using the side door, since the skunks stay off my deck. The last thing I want to do is get blasted because I opened the front door and startled a spice weasel that was rooting around the hedges.