One evening last week when I took Pixie outside before I went to bed, as soon as Pixie reached the lawn, she went bouncing around the corner of the house, pouncing on her front legs and barking.<\/p>\n
“What’s over there?” I said.<\/p>\n
I did not think it could be a raccoon, because as soon as Pixie sees a raccoon, the race is on, and the raccoon is soon up a tree.<\/p>\n
As I walked closer, Pixie continued to bounce and bark, but she did not go any closer.<\/p>\n
I looked around the corner of the house and saw . . . something fluffy and black and white. . .<\/p>\n
“Pixie!” I said. “Get away from there! Come here, Pixie!”<\/p>\n
Pixie barked a few more times and reluctantly came toward me.<\/p>\n
“Go in the house, Pixie,” I said, opening the door for her.<\/p>\n
I turned my attention back to the east side yard where the skunk continued to mosey around.<\/p>\n
I was a good 50 feet away from it, so I felt relatively safe.<\/p>\n
“Shoo!” I said, clapping my hands. “Ssst! Sssst! Shoo! Go away.”<\/p>\n
The skunk paid no attention.<\/p>\n
So here’s the silly thing. If the skunk did not worry about Pixie barking at him, why would he worry about me clapping my hands?<\/p>\n
I went across the driveway to my truck, opened the door, and started beeping the horn.<\/p>\n
When I went back to the side yard, the skunk was still nosing around. He apparently was not one bit worried about the truck horn, either.<\/p>\n
Now. See. Here’s the thing I know about skunks. They are not afraid of much. They walk through life with complete confidence. And they don’t worry about too much of anything.<\/p>\n
Eventually the skunk disappeared under the propane tank, and I was hoping that meant he had gone on his merry way.<\/p>\n
I had forgotten about the skunk until I was coming back from the barn Sunday evening after feeding the horses.<\/p>\n
As I came closer to the basement door, I saw something black and white by the culvert that runs under the driveway.<\/p>\n
The black and white thing continued until he was halfway out of the culvert. And then I knew.<\/p>\n
It was a skunk!<\/p>\n
Just at that moment, the kitties decided to have a hissy-fit fight on the other side of the house. The growling and hissing was enough for Mr. Skunk, who retreated back into the culvert.<\/p>\n
Before I went to break up the kitty fight, I set down the horse buckets. And when I turned around, there was the skunk again, sticking his head of the culvert.<\/p>\n
“Shoo! Scram!” I said.<\/p>\n
The skunk quickly retreated.<\/p>\n
I went around to gather up the cat who had been growling and snarling and put her in the house. Long-haired fluffy red-and-white MaryAnne likes to pick on the barn kittens sometimes.<\/p>\n
When I came back, I didn’t see any more of the skunk.<\/p>\n
I went into the house and got out a jug of ammonia, thinking that maybe if I sprinkled some around and made the culvert smell bad, the skunk would stay away.<\/p>\n
The culvert is only a few feet from the hen house, and I would just as soon that a skunk did not hang around the hen house.<\/p>\n
When I told Randy about our black-and-white culvert dweller, he was not especially thrilled.<\/p>\n
“Great. Skunk s bother chickens,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I know,” I said, “let’s hope the ammonia works.<\/p>\n
Up until now, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a skunk around the house.<\/p>\n
I sincerely hope it will be a long time again before I see another one.<\/p>\n
LeAnn R. Ralph<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One evening last week when I took Pixie outside before I went to bed, as soon as Pixie reached the lawn, she went bouncing around the corner of the house, pouncing on her front legs and barking. “What’s over there?” I said. I did not think it could be a raccoon, because as soon as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,86,87,85],"class_list":["post-1166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rural-route-2","tag-chickens-2","tag-dog","tag-hens","tag-skunk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1166"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2049,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions\/2049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruralroute2.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}