Outdoors – My running battle with Moby Skunk

This really all started back in January. I was sitting in the shooting shack deer hunting when something white appeared at the far end of the lane, roughly 250 yards out. I was one of those “What the heck is that?” moments.

I first thought it was a dog. Our area on Georgia Mountain is really more suburban than rural and it’s not unusual for a dog to roam through from time to time. But a glance through the binoculars told me it wasn’t a dog. It seemed to glow in the still chill air of a January morn.

By the time I realized what it was, it had gone. And at the time, it really didn’t matter. I didn’t know I had a problem. I've lived in the immediate area for 50 years. We'd never before seen a skunk in the neighborhood, white or otherwise. 

I don’t think I told anyone about the white skunk. It sounds like the tale of a stark raving lunatic. A nearly solid white skunk.

I want you to understand how this thing looks. It’s beautiful. The hairs seem to stand on end, giving it a fluffy appearance.

Months rocked on and I pretty much forgot about the white skunk, figuring I would never see it again.

Oh how wrong I was!

We have two pet cats who live on the porch, Grey and Oz. My daughter Anna adores them and checks on them often. It’s not unusual for her to peek out on the porch at night to look for her cats and say, “Dad, there’s something out here.”

The “something” is usually a raccoon or a possum.

In the interest of full disclosure, we have a small flock of turkeys in the area now. Raccoons and possums eat turkey eggs – as well as pet food on porches – so I keep a dogproof “maintenance trap" in the backyard. And I catch a good many critters, way more possums than raccoons. I’m doing my part, as it were, to help our turkeys and try to keep vermin away from the house.

One night a month or so back, Anna saw something on the porch. “Dad, there’s something out here,” she said. “And it’s not a possum.”

It was the white skunk!

Anna agrees. It’s an absolutely beautiful animal. It would make a wonderful pet, if you could somehow tame it and it weren’t so malodorous.

It showed up for a couple of nights. I baited my trap. A dogproof trap is a metal tube. The bait goes in the bottom. A critter with claws or fingers like a raccoon or possum sticks their “hand” in the trap to get the food and can’t get it back out.

I wasn’t sure if a skunk would reach in the trap, but learned all too well one would. I caught skunks on back-to-back nights. Nothing is quite as wonderful as a skunk in your trap first thing in the morning and having to deal with it. My covid mask sure came in handy.

But it reminded me of that scene in “Jaws” where Hooper tells Brody: “They caught a shark, Martin. They didn’t catch THE shark.”

Both my skunks were black, not white. They were not THE skunk.

The skunk problem turned out to be a little more widespread than we thought. A few evenings later, we were driving home and a mama skunk with three young skunks crossed out of our yard and into the neighbor’s yard. I had a 9mm pistol and thought about blazing away at them, but my preferred weapon for skunk fighting is a 20-gauge pump shotgun.

The probabilities with the sidearm were low (keep that in mind), so I held my fire. I messaged my neighbors, told them I was going to keep a shotgun in the car for awhile and if I got the opportunity, should I take the shot on their property? I could have taken out this whole family with a single shot.

The answer from my good neighbors came back in the affirmative. Their dog has been sprayed not once but twice by the rogue stinkers in the last year or two.

“Take the shot,” my neighbor said.

Moby stayed away from the traps. I started being more careful with the porch cat food and the skunk problem seemed to die down. I started putting the cat food up high. But a possum got up high and flipped it over. Food was scattered over the porch.

Anna went to check on the cats the other night and said, “Dad, the white skunk is on the porch!”

The shotgun was in the car, of course. And I made the unwise decision to go after the skunk with the 9mm and a flashlight. I’m a decent pistol shot, but shooting at night with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other changes everything.

I should’ve just gently opened the car door and gotten the shotgun. I think I could have gotten away with it.

But, alas, I proceeded with the pistol and the light. Moby was in the flower bed at first, too close to the porch railing and behind some day lilies and I couldn’t risk a shot. He started out of the bed and I squeezed one off. I knew he’d crumple, but he did not.

Moby didn’t know where the shot came from and instead of running for the woods, he ran directly at me. So I was charged by a mad white skunk!

I backpedaled in great haste and laid down suppressive fire. Have you ever seen the movie “My Cousin Vinny,” where Vinny goes out on the porch and empties the pistol because he’s heard an owl hooting? It was kind of like that, but I was running for my life.

Moby turned (thank you, sweet Jesus) and headed for the tree line. I got one passing shot as he was disappearing. I don’t think it connected.

It was as close to combat as I have ever come in my 53 years. In defense of my poor performance, he was moving, I was moving and he’s not much bigger than a fox squirrel.

Moby remains at large. I am going to do a better job “managing” my cat food, especially at night. And I will bait my trap again.

If there is an update to this story, I will keep you posted. But there’s not a lot of hope on my part.

I related all this to a friend of mine, a real “if it bleeds, we can kill it” type guy. I was hoping for encouragement.

His simple answer was:

“I think the white skunk has got your number, pal.”