wrote:
Just this morning my wife and I were doing some work in the garden
when a skunk emerged in our vicinity and proceeded rather slowly to
disappear through the fence. We've seen the same fellow before for the
first time this year around early spring and two things seem strange
about it.... 1) It appears in broad daylight and 2) It's white with a
black stripe along its back. Aren't skunks supposed to be nocturnal
and aren't they supposed to be mainly black with a white stripe?

Our Havahart trap has done well catching 'possums and groundhogs but
don't want to chance it with skunks even though there are several
instructions on how to proceed after catching a skunk with this type
of trap. Instead, we're looking at something like this;

http://sprayproofskunktrap.com/

Anyone with skunk trapping experience with this type of trap? Any bait
recommendations? Thanks!

Presuming you didn't see a badger which has black stripes down its head
and often abroad by day, then your white skunk with black stripe is an
often reported though uncommon color variation. Skunks generally have two
strips with a narrow black zone down the back either thin or broad. If the
two white zones on the back are unusually broader extending down the
sides, you end up with with a skunk that appears to have only one black
stripe.

There used to be a lot of skunk breeders in the deep south, especially
Georgia, up through the 1970s, and they'd developed domestic strains with
the black stripe, or entirely white without being albino so dark-eyed, or
all whlite on top without the thin black stripe, & long-haired strain with
most of the extra hair on the back and tail so they looked like waddling
horse manes without the horse. There are still a few breeders in the south
but relatively few and I suppose most of the domestic strains except
albino have been let to die out. Descemted skunks do make good pets,
though males should also be neutered or they can get aggressive.

I used to care for skunks and found them mostly of identical character
traits showing very little individual personality, except the spotted
skunk which is a lot more like a cat in its physical movements and swift
activity and a little smarter than cats or a ferret because they can learn
to come when called by an individual name. If they were legal in my state
I'd have a spotted skunk for a pet I liked them so much. But they were
included years ago in a broad, ill-considered ban on animals associated
with rabies. So even a captive-bred domestic strain is illegal to own in
Washington state, damned stupid law it is too, I wish the breeders had a
lobby able to effect such lame-ass legislation.

Skunks learn to go abraod by day if there are easy food sources only
available by day, if they are semi-tame & have human friends who feed them
by day, they're escaped or improperly freed pets still expecting those
******* humans to take care of them -- or if they're ill with pnemonia or
rabies & can no longer nest properly. In the latter case they can be very
dangerous, but you can usually tell they're ill because they'll be thin,
very dirty & scruffy, don't find their way about very smartly, & no longer
have enough sense to stay out of the road.

-paghat the ratgirl
--
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