Update # 8...skunks, snakes, horses...oh my!
There is a lady who lives about 100 miles from here who helps my friend rehabbing raccoons. She takes a dozen or so babies at a time because she has someone who helps her, and returns them when they are off the bottle. My friend raises at least a hundred baby raccoons a year, so she needs the help, and I am too covered up with my own to help out much.
Anyway, this lady had a skunk that had lived in a pen in her kitchen for 3 years. An unscented skunk. She had found him as a baby, raised him, and he had never sprayed. She called him Skunkenator. She wanted someone to take him, so brought him to my friend. This is the same friend who had killed her husband, and has all the raccoons...so she didn't really have time or a good place to release him.
I offered to take him. I called him Stinky. He arrived with a little plush cat castle type house. I didn't want it to get wet, so I had a big plastic dog house, and I put a bag of shavings in there and put the cat castle in there.
He wasn't in a cage or enclosed in any way, and I really did expect him to leave right away, but he didn't. He stayed for about two months. Rachael, the lady who raised him, came to see him after about six weeks. She picked him up and held him. I had never touched him, since I did reach to pet him once and he showed me his needle sharp teeth, and I decided I didn't need to pet him after all. ;)
He never slept in his cat house any more....he dug out the shavings in a corner and slept there.
After about two months...it was always a hassle to get his two food bowls inside with the cat castle blocking the door, and I didn't want to feed him outside, for fear the raccoons would get it. (As it was, I opened the little curtain type door on the dog house once to find a possum in there with him). So I set the castle outside. The next day he was gone. :(
I put the castle back and left food and he never came back to it. However, there is a hollow tree that lays down in my yard and I could smell him around there. Also lots of evidence of him digging. He dug different from an armadillo....lots more very fine dirt. I've smelled him a few times...but I have never seen him.
We don't have very many skunks around here, due to the great horned owls, but I hope Stinky is still out there, doing his thing. I keep hoping I will see him again and can take a picture to send to his "mom".
I get all kinds of creatures. This diamond back rattlesnake was given to me by animal control. I took it to Bastrop Bayou, which is a little nearer the Gulf, and released it. Lots of rattlesnakes down there and it is a wildlife preserve. I have never seen a rattlesnake on my place. I have seen coral snakes and lots of cottonmouths, but no rattlesnakes.
I didn't have to handle the snake. It was in a pillow case.
I am glad that animal control went to the trouble of sending one of their officers to a class on handling snakes, so if one is found, instead of killing it, it can be released.
I got a lot of flack when I put the picture on my FB page..."should have killed it!" but that is wrong to feel that way. They do a lot more good than harm, and where I took the snake, no houses anywhere around. They have a place in nature.
And totally unrelated to wildlife, I want to show you one of my horses. I am so proud of my old horses. Especially Lonesome, who is now 31. He looks very good for his age.
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