chasfm11
Dallas/Ft Worth Areas
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I'll admit that this post is a bit of a stretch but stay with me.
We've had skunks around our sticks and bricks house for the 7 years that we've lived here. Last year, our dogs where sprayed in their own fenced backyard. One of our dogs is an escape artist so you know that the fence is pretty solid. The skunk had to work at getting in.
This year, the population of skunks has really grown. It is nothing to see 4 or 5 in the yard in the evening. They have been coming out earlier and earlier and have become much more brazen, nearly coming up onto a porch with people sitting there. It suddenly became time to act. We found and set a Have-a-heart style trap according to our Town's instructions. We've caught two skunks in two nights.
I'm truly amazed at the animal services workers from the Town who come to deal with the skunks. Because of a history of rabies in the skunk population, the Town's policy is to euthanize all that are caught. The worker has to approach the caged skunk and get a syringe on the end of a pole in between the wires on the cage and into the stomach area on the skunk. She explained to me that they use a Sodium Pentobarbital solution and a #23 needle so that even the tough hide of the skunk only feels a slight prick. Once the skunk is asleep, she removes it from the cage and injects a larger and more permanent dose. She handled the animal very gently and compassionately. And this is from a lady who took a dose of skunk directly in the face last year. She said that it was a shame to have to do this but that there really was no other viable options
I reflected on the treatment of this skunk in light of the animal abuses, particularly dogs and cats that make the news papers. There are truly compassionate people in the world. It is just unfortunate that there aren't more. It certainly made my day to meet this one. I have no regrets about trapping out the skunks because their overpopulation due to the lack of natural predators in our area and potential for problems is just too great. At the same time, I'm glad that it can be done as humanely as possible and that there are people who are willing to do it that way. It is certainly on the long list of jobs that I could never personally do.
If we only could find a similar balance in treatment of animals, we might brige the wide gap between the PETA type extremists and those who totally lack any compassion for animals. I do wish that more people would come into contact with those like today's animal services worker. Maybe her compassion would be infectious. I know it was for me.
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fordsooperdooty
Southern California
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Warning...if killing skunks bother you, don't read this!
My wife is a couple of years from retiring after almost 30 years from her job as a Supervisor at a SoCal Animal Control Agency. When she started there she was taught that it was appropriate practice to trap nuisance skunks and place the trap in a large bag, poor some chloroform on a rag and toss it in, and the animal would be dead in a few minutes.
Talk about inhumane, the animals died a pretty harsh death, eyes and lungs burning. She was instrumental in changing the proceedure to what you described.
They also euthanized dogs and cats with the fumes from a running gasoline engine in the Carbon Monoxide chambers. That ended as well.
Thank God that if the deed has to be done, at least it is done in a humane manner now!
As Bob Barker always said..."Spay and Neuter your Dogs and cats!" Skunks at your own risk! 
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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BaldyD1
Central Florida area
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Sorry that any animal has to be destroyed. If rabies, euthanasia is better for the animals. Did the any of skunks have rabies? A wild skunk without rabies would not have come near humans except that some humans may have fed them and the skunks then overcame their natural fears. So sad.
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chasfm11
Dallas/Ft Worth Areas
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BaldyD1 wrote:Sorry that any animal has to be destroyed. If rabies, euthanasia is better for the animals. Did the any of skunks have rabies? A wild skunk without rabies would not have come near humans except that some humans may have fed them and the skunks then overcame their natural fears. So sad.
I'm not sure if you are correct. "Wild" takes on a different meaning when the skunks breed in a populated area to the extent that they have here. We are on large lots here - 1-5 acres each and there is a lot of the land that is pretty much unused.
I take a very open "live and let live" approach to almost any animal (exceptions are brown recluse spiders and venomous snakes in populated areas) As long as they leave me alone, I leave them alone. I'll chase snakes out of my garden rather than killing them. But these skunks have become brazen. It is no longer safe to sit on your back porch in the evening as they will come within 10 feet. The animal services worker was not going to have the one tested that was destroyed this morning because it had no outward signs of rabies. What she said makes sense though - just because it had no symptoms doesn't mean that it wasn't a carrier.
I don't want to loose track of the point behind this thread however. Fordsooperdooty hit right on it. Sometimes we have to do things that we'd prefer not to regarding animals. We need more people like his wife and the animal services worker today to help us understand that we don't have to cruel in the process.
Edited for typo.
* This post was
edited 07/22/10 05:39pm by chasfm11 *
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Deb and Ed M
SW MI, USA
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Joined: 06/07/2004
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chasfm11 wrote: We need more people like his wife and the animal services worker today to help us understand that we don't have to cruel in the process.
Edited for typo.
I agree - sometimes animals simply overgrow their "range" - I think the only predator a skunk has is an aerial predator like a large hawk/owl? (Or cars....LOL!) For that matter - the ONLY predator we have to keep the deer numbers manageable are hunters.
So yes, the ranks of wild animals need to be thinned - and as long as it's done as humanely as possible - that's all *I* ask.
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chasfm11
Dallas/Ft Worth Areas
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Deb and Ed M wrote:
I agree - sometimes animals simply overgrow their "range" - I think the only predator a skunk has is an aerial predator like a large hawk/owl? (Or cars....LOL!) For that matter - the ONLY predator we have to keep the deer numbers manageable are hunters.
So yes, the ranks of wild animals need to be thinned - and as long as it's done as humanely as possible - that's all *I* ask.
We have a couple of large hawks here. I even have pictures of one sitting in my pear tree. Given that skunks operate at night and this hawk seemed to be a daytime predator (whose primary prey appeared to be doves), we weren't going to get much help from him. I had a pair of baby screech owls in my old pole barn but they were not nearly big enough to take on the sized skunks that we had.
I'm not sure that I really conveyed my feelings about what I saw the animal services worker do. She was almost gentle with the skunk, making sure that she wasn't causing it any more pain with the needle prick. She said that it bent the first needle that she used by moving around because the needle was so small. When she got had it asleep, she gently removed it from the cage and administered the second and final needle. You could just tell by watching her that she had respect for the animal.
Many would say to me "no big deal." Yet I see far too many people treat their own cats and dogs, whom they claim to love, with far less respect. It just really struck me that here was someone handling a wild animal in such a tender fashion. She was clearly not happy that she had to do what she was doing but, in talking with her, she had accepted the inevitability her actions. She knew that there was no choice.
I'm very grateful to have watched her. It is very easy to forget that there are those for whom that type of compassion is just part of who they are. Her actions will influence me for a long time to come.
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PaulandMarie
Ontario
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Thank you so much for putting up this post. You are so right, these compassionate people get very little recognition for what they do. I, like you, do not think I could do that kind of job. So, I really appreciate those that do, especially the ones that are compassionate :-).
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CA POPPY
Santa Clarita, CA, USA
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We have relatives in N Calif who don't go out their door after dark because they live next to woods and skunks and opossums and raccoons abound. The main reason they come so close is because these people have sometimes forgotten and left cat food in a dish out at night. They also have bags of chicken feed where wild critters occasionally get into it. Once they saw a mama skunk with a string of babies following her come up on the porch. I guess she was teaching them where the food might be. The animal control officers we have met in our area have been people who truly seemed to love and respect animals. It would be awful if they didn't.
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