The only surefire way to ensure it goes away is wait. We got skunked before flying out of state for a funeral. We got there, and all the good clothes vaguely had a skunky aroma.... Damn dogs.
Yeah I suppose I'm being impatient... it's been a week and it's "tolerable" while I'm home because I'm used to it but if I leave the house and come back it still reeks. 🤮
God, that sounds nightmarish. I had a childhood friend with OCD and I saw how tough it was for him up close. Never smelt a skunk but I hear it’s pretty bad!
When I was 6 my dad had an album called KOOKY COUNTRY. It had all sorts of funny songs on it...
I learned this one off by hearth and sang it at my school talent show in NZ. No one at that school had ever or will ever smell a skunk. I did not smell one till I went to an empty restaurant in Ontario in 2003. Skunks had died under it.. I walked out.
Heres a link to the song... its funny.. and may help or make things worse... IDK??.
"Thankfully my dog didn't take a direct hit, but my house did!"
I knew it. I don't even need to read further, because I know precisely the misery you're dealing with! My house has been skunk-nuked three times in the last five years because the rotten little bastards keep digging their way under the skirt in winter and inevitably something else will get down there with them, a fight will break out, and the spray is gonna fly.
My wife and I have tried everything from paving stones to chicken wire to repellants to traps by every entrance we've found them making, but until this year, every one we got rid of just invited a new one in its place. We tried going through our park (we live in a manufactured home) to get rid of them, but they're apparently not allowed to do anything more than moving them up to a mile away. We tried going through local pest control, same problem, until we eventually found a company that was outside our municipality that was able to use a technicality that allowed them to bring the skunks they caught up to the local mountains. I don't know for sure if they're the reason why, but the roughly half dozen skunks we used to regularly see or hear about in our park haven't been seen since we had those guys deal with the one under our house last year. My guess is word of mouth spread from our direct neighbors when they learned this company was actually willing to relocate them to a place where they couldn't easily get back to our park.
That shit sucks when they blast under your home. It permeates everything and lingers for weeks. Our sole saving grace is that our winters are quite mild, so at the very least it was easy enough to just leave all the windows open during the day and toss a sweater on when it got a bit chilly. A couple weeks of that, and the smell largely wafted out on its own. On days where that wasn't an option, or if you live someplace where that's a non-starter like you do? It's awful. The biggest aggravation, because there's really nothing you can do but fruitlessly try to mask that stench.
Yeah, this is the same sort of thing. They say "don't worry we don't kill the skunks we just relocate!" Like, great, so they can just wander back? These animals aren't endangered by any means. They're thriving. Just please take them as far away as possible, take them out to the country if you aren't going to skin them and make me a fun hat.
So sorry to hear your frustration. But that's also why I decided to post this because mutual commiserating can be fun through the stress.
At least they eat mice/rats. (As well as garbage etc.) So if you have skunks the other critter population is hopefully lower.
The mice and rats thing doesn't mean much with how many stray and feral cats wander through our park. They've got that pest control job locked down! The skunks will eat unwelcome grubs and larvae that might damage our garden, though. It's just too bad they uproot my wife's plants in order to do that, the little shits.
I so understand what you're dealing with, though. You got on yourself a bit for cracking under the pressure thanks to your OCD, but I don't have that, and those early days where the smell is at its worst still drove me up the wall, too. There were many nights where I was tempted to go sleep in my car because, well, take a wild guess which rooms the skunks usually decided to let loose under? If your guesses were, "Your office or where you sleep," you'd be correct! Just imagine it, waking up to the sound of a skunk and a possum fighting each other, only to suddenly get a hit of that smell wafting up through your floor that's so concentrated it burns the nostrils for that first hour.
I just feel so bad that you guys can't just open the windows in the day and let it air out some. It still takes weeks for it to clear, but at least during the day that does help.
I have them open during the day even yesterday when we had rain/snow. But at night it's pretty cold like last night it went down to -10C so I only had 1 open and we just have to suffer the smell through the heat vents.
I'm afraid to run my dryer at all until this is over because it's in the basement where the smell is the worst. Imagine cooking that stink into a large appliance 💀 AT LEAST it gets just sunny enough to dry clothes this time of year, I don't have to freeze-dry everything.
I appreciate your comments and I'm sorry you're dealing with it too. Stinky little shits.
Well fortunately I'm not dealing with it right now. Last time it happened was in either Jan or Feb last year, and that's when we found the pest control service that actually took them out of town. I just have a long memory, and having it happen three times in five years really makes it easy to recall the experience 😒
I hope the weather will take a nice, unseasonably warm turn for a while up there, make things a little easier.
My dog got skunked when my dad and I went camping once, near the Gulf of Mexico. Dad threw him in the water and then realized it was all oily and polluted, so we had skunk + wet dog + garbage water smell in the van the entire drive back to New Mexico. We had to keep the windows down which made the drive loud and cold despite the summer days.
Moe, the dog, had to stay outside for months before we left him back in. Poor dog. He fucking loved it. Probably the happiest he's ever been.
Twelve months ago I got "too close" to a skunk. Something had been nosing around the chicken coop, and we had a live trap out. Bad idea. I did NOT get sprayed, but it had sprayed the cage, and it was thick in the air. I wore gardening gloves and walked with a flattened cardboard box as a shield, like some parody of a Roman legionnaire. I got the cage open and the skunk ran off in the opposite direction, away from me. But the "damage" was done. The trap went WAAY down the garden. The gloves went in the garbage. The garage, near to the coop, was collaterally skunked for days. And despite SO MANY washes, the hoodie I wore that day still smells (very faintly, but truly) of skunk.
So both amusement and commiseration come from my firsthand experience with skunks! :)
Oh my gosh it's just brutal, isn't it? Luckily for Tues and Wed it was really windy so having all the windows open helped but now it's rain/snow. I have the windows open anyway but omg. It's a powerful stench
I’ve never had the misfortune to be up close and personal with a skunk. Sometimes you’re driving on the highway and you can smell the stink where one of them got pancaked by the traffic. It seems like the radius of the odor is about a mile in either direction of the mashed little critter. A strange Darwinian adaptation! Hopefully you have used up your bad luck for the year, or at least for the second quarter of 2025.
I already ordered an ozone generator off Amazon as a last resort!! Lmao
I hear it's only supposed to be on for like 2 hrs max and then in smells like thunderstorm? I don't want mothballs smell 💀 if there's one smell I hate almost as much as skunk it's mothballs...
BUT, if it deskunks the house, great. if I wind up not using it, I'm only out $70
Yeah I've read up on the dangers. "Don't breathe this!" Etc. From what the listing says it's just pure ozone, I got one with a ton of ratings so fingers crossed it's not a fake should I actually use it. Getting my kids, pets, plants out of the house for a few hours will be a PITA but if I have to I have to.
I hear if you catch them young and descent them they make good pets. 🤔
I've heard this too! They'll still turn their butt at you if you scare them but they can't squirt anything.
The only surefire way to ensure it goes away is wait. We got skunked before flying out of state for a funeral. We got there, and all the good clothes vaguely had a skunky aroma.... Damn dogs.
Yeah I suppose I'm being impatient... it's been a week and it's "tolerable" while I'm home because I'm used to it but if I leave the house and come back it still reeks. 🤮
Sadly not much you can do about it. Best of luck with the trappers.
They should be by this afternoon, finally!
I'm so sorry, Lisa. It's hard enough to deal with in lesser amounts. I hope you find some relief soon.
Thanks. It's starting to become tolerable, thankfully it's been really windy so lots of air flow through the house
God, that sounds nightmarish. I had a childhood friend with OCD and I saw how tough it was for him up close. Never smelt a skunk but I hear it’s pretty bad!
It's bad and it sticks to everything. Be glad you've never smelled it!
When I was 6 my dad had an album called KOOKY COUNTRY. It had all sorts of funny songs on it...
I learned this one off by hearth and sang it at my school talent show in NZ. No one at that school had ever or will ever smell a skunk. I did not smell one till I went to an empty restaurant in Ontario in 2003. Skunks had died under it.. I walked out.
Heres a link to the song... its funny.. and may help or make things worse... IDK??.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-o2xlffWo&ab_channel=FlamisMan
It helps. I'm in the "well we've cried now we can try and laugh" phase of the trauma LOL
Acceptance :)
"Thankfully my dog didn't take a direct hit, but my house did!"
I knew it. I don't even need to read further, because I know precisely the misery you're dealing with! My house has been skunk-nuked three times in the last five years because the rotten little bastards keep digging their way under the skirt in winter and inevitably something else will get down there with them, a fight will break out, and the spray is gonna fly.
My wife and I have tried everything from paving stones to chicken wire to repellants to traps by every entrance we've found them making, but until this year, every one we got rid of just invited a new one in its place. We tried going through our park (we live in a manufactured home) to get rid of them, but they're apparently not allowed to do anything more than moving them up to a mile away. We tried going through local pest control, same problem, until we eventually found a company that was outside our municipality that was able to use a technicality that allowed them to bring the skunks they caught up to the local mountains. I don't know for sure if they're the reason why, but the roughly half dozen skunks we used to regularly see or hear about in our park haven't been seen since we had those guys deal with the one under our house last year. My guess is word of mouth spread from our direct neighbors when they learned this company was actually willing to relocate them to a place where they couldn't easily get back to our park.
That shit sucks when they blast under your home. It permeates everything and lingers for weeks. Our sole saving grace is that our winters are quite mild, so at the very least it was easy enough to just leave all the windows open during the day and toss a sweater on when it got a bit chilly. A couple weeks of that, and the smell largely wafted out on its own. On days where that wasn't an option, or if you live someplace where that's a non-starter like you do? It's awful. The biggest aggravation, because there's really nothing you can do but fruitlessly try to mask that stench.
Yeah, this is the same sort of thing. They say "don't worry we don't kill the skunks we just relocate!" Like, great, so they can just wander back? These animals aren't endangered by any means. They're thriving. Just please take them as far away as possible, take them out to the country if you aren't going to skin them and make me a fun hat.
So sorry to hear your frustration. But that's also why I decided to post this because mutual commiserating can be fun through the stress.
At least they eat mice/rats. (As well as garbage etc.) So if you have skunks the other critter population is hopefully lower.
The mice and rats thing doesn't mean much with how many stray and feral cats wander through our park. They've got that pest control job locked down! The skunks will eat unwelcome grubs and larvae that might damage our garden, though. It's just too bad they uproot my wife's plants in order to do that, the little shits.
I so understand what you're dealing with, though. You got on yourself a bit for cracking under the pressure thanks to your OCD, but I don't have that, and those early days where the smell is at its worst still drove me up the wall, too. There were many nights where I was tempted to go sleep in my car because, well, take a wild guess which rooms the skunks usually decided to let loose under? If your guesses were, "Your office or where you sleep," you'd be correct! Just imagine it, waking up to the sound of a skunk and a possum fighting each other, only to suddenly get a hit of that smell wafting up through your floor that's so concentrated it burns the nostrils for that first hour.
I just feel so bad that you guys can't just open the windows in the day and let it air out some. It still takes weeks for it to clear, but at least during the day that does help.
I have them open during the day even yesterday when we had rain/snow. But at night it's pretty cold like last night it went down to -10C so I only had 1 open and we just have to suffer the smell through the heat vents.
I'm afraid to run my dryer at all until this is over because it's in the basement where the smell is the worst. Imagine cooking that stink into a large appliance 💀 AT LEAST it gets just sunny enough to dry clothes this time of year, I don't have to freeze-dry everything.
I appreciate your comments and I'm sorry you're dealing with it too. Stinky little shits.
Well fortunately I'm not dealing with it right now. Last time it happened was in either Jan or Feb last year, and that's when we found the pest control service that actually took them out of town. I just have a long memory, and having it happen three times in five years really makes it easy to recall the experience 😒
I hope the weather will take a nice, unseasonably warm turn for a while up there, make things a little easier.
I hope so too. Calling for rain for a couple more days but at least it isn't snow!
My dog got skunked when my dad and I went camping once, near the Gulf of Mexico. Dad threw him in the water and then realized it was all oily and polluted, so we had skunk + wet dog + garbage water smell in the van the entire drive back to New Mexico. We had to keep the windows down which made the drive loud and cold despite the summer days.
Moe, the dog, had to stay outside for months before we left him back in. Poor dog. He fucking loved it. Probably the happiest he's ever been.
Dogs, man! But we love them.
Thank you and sorry!
Thank you for the entertainment! And sorry you had to go through that!
It is what it is! So long as it was entertaining to read ;)
Twelve months ago I got "too close" to a skunk. Something had been nosing around the chicken coop, and we had a live trap out. Bad idea. I did NOT get sprayed, but it had sprayed the cage, and it was thick in the air. I wore gardening gloves and walked with a flattened cardboard box as a shield, like some parody of a Roman legionnaire. I got the cage open and the skunk ran off in the opposite direction, away from me. But the "damage" was done. The trap went WAAY down the garden. The gloves went in the garbage. The garage, near to the coop, was collaterally skunked for days. And despite SO MANY washes, the hoodie I wore that day still smells (very faintly, but truly) of skunk.
So both amusement and commiseration come from my firsthand experience with skunks! :)
Oh my gosh it's just brutal, isn't it? Luckily for Tues and Wed it was really windy so having all the windows open helped but now it's rain/snow. I have the windows open anyway but omg. It's a powerful stench
Powerful indeed! At least you can have some through-wind in the house :)
I’ve never had the misfortune to be up close and personal with a skunk. Sometimes you’re driving on the highway and you can smell the stink where one of them got pancaked by the traffic. It seems like the radius of the odor is about a mile in either direction of the mashed little critter. A strange Darwinian adaptation! Hopefully you have used up your bad luck for the year, or at least for the second quarter of 2025.
I hope so too!
And compared to "up close and personal", the "highway skunk" has a "pleasant bouquet"!
May you continue to be fortunate :)
I already ordered an ozone generator off Amazon as a last resort!! Lmao
I hear it's only supposed to be on for like 2 hrs max and then in smells like thunderstorm? I don't want mothballs smell 💀 if there's one smell I hate almost as much as skunk it's mothballs...
BUT, if it deskunks the house, great. if I wind up not using it, I'm only out $70
Yeah I've read up on the dangers. "Don't breathe this!" Etc. From what the listing says it's just pure ozone, I got one with a ton of ratings so fingers crossed it's not a fake should I actually use it. Getting my kids, pets, plants out of the house for a few hours will be a PITA but if I have to I have to.