Did you watch PBS Nature program on Skunks last night? It had some great information and introduced some quirky folk who passed their time studying or rescuing the fragrant animal. I sympathized with how life could thrust you with no warning at all into a single species that became your fate but my jaw dropped when they talked about Marysville CA.
Marysville has a lot of skunks. Using the crosswalk, meandering through town, everywhere you look skunks. And it also has many miles of Levy protecting it. So when the skunks need a cozy burrow for the night they dig a hole in it and Marysville gets very, very nervous. They showed workers filling the burrows with cement and then setting the entire levy on fire to discourage skunks.
(God knows what they do to beavers.)
And then, well almost as an afterthought, the narrator mentioned that there were a lot of feral cats too in Marysville. And that, wait for it, folk who fed feral cats in Marysville. And- wait for it– SKUNKS SEEMED TO BE EATING CATFOOD and maybe that was affecting population.
Really? Ya’ think?
They all got letters this morning. Sheeshsheeshsheesh. It’s PBS not Animal Planet or Billybob’s webcam!! I was expecting some dynamic explanation like the 15 year reproductive life cycle of the cicada. Nope. Cat food. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that as a GENERAL RULE whenever you have a wildlife problem with bears, or foxes, or skunks, or coyotes. The very FIRST thing you should do is assess the pet food situation. Can we all just agree on that?
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Jr last night, looking beaver-ish. He came out of the bank by the footbridge at 6:15 and brought his branch back there to dine. Things are looking very Autumnal at the dam, and it gets dark so early photography is nearly a thing of the past:
Audubon tonight! Wish me luck!
