Fox T-Bird/Cougar Forums  

...And no, I'm not talking about my car. I just walked down to the river bank to check the progress of my grapes and heard a splash in the river (which is fairly high right now after a rainfall a few days ago). I looked downstream and saw what at first glance appeared to be duck, but a closer look made it appear like a cat struggling against the current. I walked down to get a better look and possibly pull the "cat" out, and discovered that it wasn't a cat at all - it was a skunk, swimming upstream, toward me.

Apparently skunks have poor balance (why else would it have fallen in the river?) and apparently they can swim pretty well. I didn't wait around long enough to welcome it as...

Skunks can also be pretty friendly and usually won't spray unless they feel threatened. If he was swimming toward you, I doubt he felt threatened and you prob'ly coulda got away with scratching behind his ears. On the other hand if you had scratched behind his ears he might have followed you home.

My brother had twin skunks as pets when I was younger..... Trixie and Dixie were their names. I think he had hit their mother with his car one night, because he just showed up at home with these two little baby skunks.

He also used to catch skunks just to say he could do it.... LOL... he walked up behind them and tucked their tail under before they knew what was happening.... I don't think he ever got sprayed.

I got a good "close sighting" story about a skunk.

I was working in my auto pit (on my Cougar, of course) and at some point I looked to one side toward the side cut-out for getting into the pit. I nearly had a heart attack - a skunk was sitting in there looking back at me! I very quickly but slowly backed away from the skunk. Well, talk about bad balance - I had left my garage door open over night because the Cougar was halfway in and halfway out of the garage - apparently the skunk wandered into the garage at night looking for some heat (it was December) and fell into the pit!

It took me like 3 days to coax that little thing out of the pit! First I put the ladder up for it to climb, but apparently it was too weak to climb out. Then I laid a nice maple board angled up the side for it to get out, but apparently it was too slippery. At this point the skunk was getting pretty weak and I wasn't sure it could get out anyway, so I fed it! :hick: My idea on the third day was a winner - I placed the ladder on top of the angled board so the skunk could rest on the ladder rungs as it worked it way out of the pit. The next day I was extremely pleased to see that the skunk had found his way out of the garage! If you wonder why I look in every nook and cranny of my auto-pit before I go down into it, now you know! :D

I think what I would have deposited in that pit would have smelled worse than any skunk:shakeass:

Your experience reminds me of a similar experience when I was in trade school. We had left one of the shop vehicles over the pit the day before, so first thing in the morning the teacher brings us all out around the pit. He went into it (it was only big enough for one or two people) to teach us a lesson on... I dunno, suspensions or something, while we all sat on the floor around the edge of the pit. While he was under there he caught a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye and looked down to see the biggest wharf rat you could imagine staring back up at him. If you don't live near water you can't really appreciate the size of a wharf rat. Think "as big as a cat" and you're getting the idea. Anyway, it turned out that rats were pretty high on the teacher's list of fears. He started freaking out under this car, and in his panic he fell off the ladder while trying to get out of the pit. That put him eye-to-eye with the rat and also knocked the ladder down. Much hilarity ensued while the teacher, screaming like a little girl, was trying to get out of the pit. Once he finally got out somebody grabbed a 2X4 from the carpentry shop and killed the rat. That was a day of legend in that trade school...