I had a lot of experiences with skunks when I lived in “The Rock House.” I will tell you about some of them. Since Heber was just a small town and close to the hills and forest, it was not at all unusual to have skunks come into town. It was also not unusual at all to have one or more dogs in town smell like skunks because they had tried to protect their property and been sprayed by a skunk.
One of the reasons the skunks came into town was to scavenge food. Those who had pets and fed them on the back porch or in the garage sometimes ended up feeding the marauding skunks instead of their pets. We had that experience as well.
I can remember one time when Charlie Reidhead came home with me from some church function (probably MIA) and he stopped to visit for awhile before going home. To go home he went out our back door, across the backyard, through the fence and then to his house. On this particular night, when he stepped out the back door, he encountered a skunk that was busy eating our dog’s food from the dish on the back porch. Yes, he got sprayed!
I also remember one summer when the skunks seemed to be especially bad about coming into town. It was a summer when Ted was home. Ted always liked firearms and he had purchased a twenty-two caliber revolver (it looked like a Colt .45). He either bought or made a holster for his pistol and he kept it hanging over the bed post of his bed. I think I was sharing a bedroom with him that summer or else I was sleeping up in the top of the shop. All I remember is that if he heard anything moving outside or if he heard any dogs barking he would jump out of bed, grab his pistol and a flashlight and run outside to find the skunk. When he found one he would shoot it with his pistol. Naturally all of us younger kids would follow him to watch. I think he killed several skunks that summer.
Sometimes the skunks didn’t cooperate. I remember one time when one of them ran into Uncle Mart Porter’s garage to hide. We never did get it to come out of the garage so Ted could shoot it. I’m not sure how happy Uncle Mart was to have a skunk cowering in his garage.
Probably my least favorite memory of skunks occurred when I was about to leave for college at ASU. We had been having skunk problems and following my big brothers example, I decided to “shoot the pesky critters.” I did not have a pistol but I did have a twenty-two rifle. Being the “great white hunter,” I discovered a skunk outside our house and I shot him. The only problem was that I did not kill him instantly. In fact, I only mortally wounded him. To escape, he crawled under our house to die.
You may think you can imagine what that was like, but you would be wrong. The smell was pretty awful! We opened all the doors and windows and left the house for a few hours to let it air out. At first we thought maybe he had crawled out from under the house and escaped into the wild again but as the days passed, it became apparent that he was still under the house. I was about ready to leave for school but Mom informed me that I wasn’t going anywhere “until that skunk was out from under the house!” I got a garden rake, opened the crawl space cover and went under the house to find the skunk. I found him and he was dead alright, but he still “stunk like crazy.” Using the rake I raked the body out from under the house and carried it off somewhere far from the house and buried it. Maybe that was my punishment for killing one of Heavenly Fathers innocent creations or maybe it was my punishment for being a poor shot. Whatever the reason, it was an experience I have no desire to repeat again in this lifetime. Every time I smell a skunk I am reminded of it once again.