A few days ago I woke up and I thought David was cooking breakfast, but it smelled really bad.  I got up and closed the bedroom door and went back to sleep.  Later, when I woke up again, I went downstairs and asked him what he had cooked.  He said he hadn’t cooked anything. “What is that I smelled?”  I asked him.

All day long I kept smelling something bad.  Sometimes it smelled like something was hot and was burning.  I have a very strong sense of smell so anything different in our house, I notice it right away.  This smell really was bothering me. I was worried that maybe the furnace was getting too hot, but David said it wasn’t that. David has no sense of smell to speak of so he did not notice what I was smelling.

Later I was outside and came up on our back porch and there it was.  The smell, but this time it smelled like skunk.  I was worried the dogs had run a skunk under the deck.  But, no, there was no skunk there, but David did some searching around the house and found what looked like burrowing under our front porch and it smelled like skunk. That’s all we needed. A family of skunks under the house!  He said it looked like something was living under there.

Since we built the new front porch we have had two kitten litters from a feral cat and a woodchuck take up residence under there.  This was by far the worst occupant we have had under there.  The first kitten litter David caught the kittens and mother cat, who scratched him up pretty badly.  We managed to find homes for all of them except the mother cat who got away.  The second litter, the mother cat got hit by a car and we think the kittens died under there, we are not sure.  The woodchuck also got hit by a car so that problem went away. But now, we have skunks!

David did some searching online for pest control people and he had a man answer who said he would come out and try to catch the skunk or skunks.  He came out and brought his trap and set it up.  He was a retired minister and a jack of all trades now. I wonder if he had ever caught a skunk before.   The first night he caught nothing so he moved the trap to another location and still no skunk trapped.   This time something ate the marshmallows he had put in the trap. Marshmallows!  Who would have thought of that to catch a skunk?

Remember the cartoon Pepe Lapew?   He was an amorous skunk who was constantly going after this cat.  He had a French accent and was very debonaire.  I thought he was sooo funny.  You could always tell his odor put off the cat.  Well, the skunk under our porch is putting me off.

The worst smell is in our basement. David says there’s a tunnel under there something has dug.

So far no luck catching the skunk.  I’m hoping we get it gone before porch sitting weather!  Bye.