Skunk Saga, Chapter III

OK, it seems there are some pros and cons to ignoring a skunk carcass in the hostas and hoping it goes away. On the plus side, it actually did go away. The prospect of having to inter the aft portion of a deceased skunk kept me up most of Saturday night, but by Sunday morning, there was naught but a tuft of black and white fur where the skunk had met its end. Relieved of the duty of skunk mortician, I went about my business until Monday night, when, in the middle of watching Friday night's episode of Stargate: Atlantis on the TiVo, Emp. Peng. and I noticed a certain unmistakable odor wafting through the living room, seemingly originating near the window air conditioner. The aroma also settled into his office, which has a window located carcass-adjacent. This was, to put it mildly, not good. However, there was nothing I was going to do about it at 10:30 p.m., so we set the Ionic Breeze up to try to clear the odor out of the office and once again resorted to the "Ignore it and hope it goes away" tactic.

Once again, the strategy worked. By morning, the odor was gone, as were any remaining skunk fragments. Life was good and fresh. Until about 10:30 p.m. that night, when the smell was back, bigger than before. This time, I hit the porch light to get a visual inspection, fully expecting to see that the skunk had a relative taking its revenge on us. It was a somewhat more distant relative than I expected. There, just off the stoop, was a fully three-dimensional and mobile opossum, apparently looking around for anything he had missed. Opossums being carrion-eaters, it is a reasonable conjecture that he is the one who extracted the skunk carcass for me. I suspect it is also reasonable that he did not take care to avoid the scent glands and is now roaming the area bathed in a full dose of skunk musk.

The thing I am learning about skunk musk (other than that I am in the minority of the population that doesn't find it an offensive odor): it lingers. After two nightly passes from the Bearer of The Skunk Musk, there is a persistent, faint skunkiness around the entire front of the house. I expect that at this point, it is a matter of waiting for it to dissipate naturally, since there is no fixed point-source of the problem.

It does give me a good idea for a home security system to deter the door-to-door religion salespeople and trick-or-treaters, though. You take an infrared detector and a vial...