Picture Sundays: CritterCam Reveals Skunk

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You know that post I did earlier this year about skunk proofing the yard? I set up the new Root Simple CritterCam last night and it’s pretty obvious that skunk proofing project goes in the fail category.

Many thanks to Max Morgan for directing me to the correct camera to use for small critters: the Wingscape BirdCam Pro.

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5 Comments

  1. Have you seen the recent Outside article on the proliferation of skunks in the American landscape? It’s pretty crazy how these little suckers have adapted and thrived in our manicured environment. Never mind the thievery and stink.

  2. I grew up with these stinkers and had some real bad experiences with them. A fresh spray can asphyxiate a person. One thing I do know, all areas where they can hide, under porches, houses and other outbuildings need to be secured from them. Give them no place to hide. They can smell the fruits getting ripe, collect & keep it clean.

  3. Have you tried a small fence charger? I haven’t had to deal with skunks lately, but a few years ago I lived in a small rental house in town and has a serious problem with squirrels. The house was old, and had scree-covered soffet holes in the eaves to ventilate the crawl space above the living area. The squirrels were able to take advantage of the rusted out screen, and were using a power line as an elevated pedestrian walkway to travel from a network of trees and power poles, right to my house! I first made several calls to the rental management agency. They finally sent out one repair “specialist” who tacked plastic rain-gutter covers over the holes! As you can probably guess it took the squirrels about 2 minutes to figure those out and chew through them, and they actually seemed to enjoy using the plastic mesh around the holes as a “hand” hold to access their nice dry home. I realized after several such failures it was up to me to find a solution, so I went out a bought the cheapest fence-charger unit I could find and just enough wire and stand-offs to do the job. The charger was positioned under an extended eave and I ran insulated line up to the eave, then ran a back-and-forth pattern of bare wire over the line of soffet holes. About an hour later I heard this VERY loud and annoyed squirrel-chatter and looked outside to see a squirrel clinging to the power line acting VERY annoyed, flicking its tail and chattering in the direction of my little deterrence. I heard them try a time or two after that, and observed them looking for a way around the nasty wire-snake creature before they gave up. After a week I disconnected the power but left the wires in place as a visual reminder. I never had squirrels in the attic again while I lived there. [And no animals were harmed in the creation of this documentary 🙂 ].
    I’m not sure how a skunk would respond to this approach, but I think it would be worth a trial. Just be sure if at all possible that you position the wire downwind of your living areas, as I can imagine what their first reaction will be!

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