Skunked!

Jacob Dingel – WildlifeHelp.org

The first indication we got last night was Amber suddenly standing up – fur standing up on the back of her neck and her butt – agitated and whining, demanding to go out. We have learned the hard way NOT to let her out at times like this.

We penned Amber up behind a dog gate and went out to the garage to investigate. We never SAW him, but it was obvious that a skunk had either been in the garage or had been close by. The garage REEKED.

Happily, both doggies and one cat were inside. Smoke, our 2nd cat, apparently only walked through the odor, not having gotten skunked directly. Her dose wasn’t even bad enough we had to try to bathe her.  I’m really happy because she would have expressed her intense displeasure by ripping us to shreds while we tried to apply the fix.

(We use a recipe of hydrogen peroxide and Dawn dish washing liquid to bathe our animals when they’ve been skunked. It works better than the standard tomato juice suggestion, and well enough that we can allow the treated and then bathed animals back into the house.)

We took the doggies out for their final outing separately – each on a leash – to make sure we had control of them.

This morning you can still smell skunk in the garage, but we have the garage door open and expect most of the odor to be gone by the time we close up for the night tonight.

I have no clue what we would have to do to try to get the smell out if the skunk had given the garage a serious dose…