Revenge of the Skunks
05 Jun 2011 Comments Off
Even with obsessive care, our lawn would never be the most aesthetically appealing lawn in the neighborhood. Last year it was infested with the infamous White Grubs, and now sports the pitted scars left by scavenging skunks, who unceremoniously dug at the earth, rolling the sod into sad mounds of death. We waged war on the skunks; I’d googled an article on how to deter them by half-filling 2 litre pop bottles with water and leaving them strewn over the lawn in the darkness to appear as though Other Skunks had claimed the territory. This was an ultimate failure, as the skunks ignored them completely. We resorted to launching the pop bottles like giant water grenades through the air at toward the skunks when they appeared in the dead of night, who reacted appropriately by raising their tails and toddling away under the neighbor’s porch. But they had their revenge later that summer, lurking outside the front door one evening to attack our poor dog when she went out to urinate. Luckily, our dog was very tall and didn’t get stung in the eyes; the majority of the scent bomb hit her squarely in the chest, ruining her leather collar. Try as we might, we couldn’t get rid of the smell. Our entire house smelled like a skunk lived there. The skunks then proceeded to move in under our back shed, and have a family. No one was safe after that.
But, those were good times. The thrill of fear each time we let the dog out, the times we had to wait inside the car until the skunk decided to wander far enough away that we could make a dash for the door, the warning scent close in our neighborhood making us wonder if perhaps it was our neighbor’s annoying poodle that was the unwitting victim. Our huge corner lot of lawn is now so riddled with lumps that we pretty much need a mower with offroad capabilities. There is a decided lack of mowing needed, because most of the grass died in the Great Skunk Wars, turning our sad chore into an odd kind of victory.
