skunk cabbage is an amazing plant. one of the most advanced wildflowers on earth. it can live for over 2000 years!!! The Eastern Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus Foetidus) this plant is usually treated like trash bacause of many lies. but in reality when you get to know them these plants will facinate you, most likely more than any other plant. the skunk cabbage is a very advanced creature, even for a plant. it can manipulate heat. it uses this heat to melt through the snow and bloom very early in the season. i have watched this plant abused ever since i was a child. it is always been one of my favorite plants and i have always ttried in vain to protect them... but to no avail. swamps are filled, millions of skunk cabbage smothered and ripped apart by bulldozers and excavators... hated literally to death by farmers and gardeners alike. they kick over the flowers. they chop the plants down and put systematic herbacide on the wound causing massive chemical burns which slowly and agonizingly kill the plant. people stomp on them and blugeon them and no one seems to care. what these humans don't understand is how intelligent and amazing these creatures truly are. they just can't comrehend that anything is abl to feel without a human brain... but the skunk cabbage has a brain. its called a caudex. it is a cental nervous system located at the base of the thick subterranian stem. it looks like a spine. with a woody calloused exterior replacing bone. and inside is a soft starchy tissue containing a vascular structure. in the middle is something that looks like a spinal cord. and it may as well be. this caudex is the plants brain. and like it or not we have to accept it. the caudex has many sockets and countless long thick roots emanate from them. inside each root is a nerve connecting back to the caudexal ensemble. these roots are even mobile. the can pull the plant where it wants to go. or if the plant is in pain it can clench them. the skunk cabbage is capable of feeling pain a reasoning as are all plants. something our hardened hearts refuse to accept. skunk cabbages are especially intelligent. they can not reproduce asexually and the push their seeds away from themselves so they should all be evenly spaced. but they are not... some skunk cabbages are som intertwined that you cannot pull them apart even though they are two seperate caudices. skunk cabbage will pull themselves toward a loved one and will embrace eachother for life. whn they flower the flowers will be one male and one female and the sexual componants will actually face each other. to ensure that only his/her mate can pollinate ot have sex with him or her. this shows that they feel love. they even have preferences to whom they want to spend their lives with. skunk cabbages can live very long lives. some entities are believed to be thousands of years old. but most modern skunk cabbage never will see that lifespan because now we are encroaching upon their sacred homes. skunk cabbages grow in colonies, formed of concentric rings. they are all one family. each ring of parents has a ring of children encircling it so that the children will be watched over and have room to grow and procreate. if one is hurt of if one dies they all know and they all weep. the elder(s) are located directly in the middle of the colony. like a king and queen, but so far away from the ruthless kings of humanity. they love their subjects. if the colony is unable to expand due to deforestation or habitat loss, the colony will began to suffocate. the elders will commit and altruistic suicide. they will let go and push their vulnerable caudices from the earth... and they will die... this is to ensure that their children have room to grow. this selfless act will continue until enough room has been created. the elders are always the first to do this. this is how a human leader should feel. we could learn a lot from the skunk cabbage. in this dying world their is little left of nature... throughout my painful and agonizing existence i have been comforted by these forest sentinels. I cannot bear the thought of losing them. and i would gladly lay down my own life to ensure that their species endures humanity's biological holocaust. skunk cabbage are very artistic. each one has its own artistic style. even though the flowers die back every year they always look the same on an individual plant. the variations are such that they look like different species even though they are all one genus. this shows that they can identify themselves and have artistic preferences.

We live in the city also. Yes, they LOVE cat food!! I always have cat food out for stray cats, imagine my surprise when I saw my 1st opossum! They don't do any harm that I have seen & they eat all the things that we usually hate! SLUGS, mice, rats, bugs etc. A wonderful lady on here (Marilyn)rescues them in Texas. She told me they love yogurt. Sooo, every night our visiting opossums get yogurt, cat food is always out & some of whatever we had for dinner, they love chicken! I consider myself very fortunate to have opossums visit me. One winter we had a big one make his home on our back porch! I loved Pete. I have never seen a skunk. It is true that they RARELY get rabies, if you saw one during the day someone probably disturbed his sleeping spot. Also, I believe they have poor eyesight but a very good sense of smell. They are not agressive, only in self defense. My cats do not bother them & they do not bother the cats, sometimes they run from the cats.

For anyone still checking this post, I talked with wildlife exclusion service; they told me to wait until season where babies go out at night with mother (baby season is summer, so after August or Sept) before trying to rid crawl space. Seal up openings except one that you see tracks or know they use, and do a one way door on that one, like other posters have mentioned. Skunks go out at night. You could do a stake out at night to see, or check during the day (after using a one way door) to see that they are gone. You can buy a "predator scent" to put in the crawl area to keep them away, then seal up all openings. If you trap the mother or seal up an entry points, you could be leaving babies to starve and die. If you have the money, it's best to call a humane service that can do all of the above without trapping. In my area (Sonoma, CA), http://www.awces.com gave me info. You can check out their website just for info. I have no affiliation, I just don't like to hurt animals.

We are hosting a honeybee hive through a local Host a Hive program and have a juvenile skunk attacking and eating the bees. Our beekeeper is coming by to add a board to the front to discourage this behavior, but I thought the video might be entertaining for some of you.