Skunk

Wood Mouse has recently blogged about skunks naturalizing in England. Without visas, even.

Here in my backyard I am naturalizing skunks, who are normally not afraid of anything, to be afraid of my voice. I have been accomplishing that with vocal warnings, "what are you doing?" followed by a dousing with a pitcher of icy water.

This has been met with much success and only one spray, which caused us to chuckle and "ewwww" vociferously for a couple of hours. Big skunk and medium skunk now flee at the sound of my voice, running back into the woods or tumbling under the deck.

Last night Peko was sniffing by the back door and I knew before I looked. The dog has joined us in the skunk deterrent operation, choosing to bark furiously in the middle of the night when he hears one on the back deck. I don't let him out after dark so he has not met the business end...yet.

Anyhow, we looked out the window and here was "tiny skunk". He was just too cute to douse, and apparently has not yet been treated to a cold shower- since when I opened the door and asked, "what are you doing?" he just looked at us and continued eating the cat food.

"Awwww"

This pic was about two feet from the camera-the kids wanted to go pet him! I am going to try macro setting on the next skunk pic to see if that helps the blur. I used night setting auto focus with no flash, since the batteries need recharging.