The man who knocked on Ned Miller’s door had a tiny skunk in his hand and extortion on his mind.
“(The baby skunk) was completely naked, and his eyes had just opened,” said Miller. “His skin was striped even before he had fur and, by my estimation, he was about 10 days old.”
The guy threatened to feed the 3-inch-long animal to his snake if he couldn’t sell it for $20. Miller’s sister marched to the door, grabbed the skunk, told the seedy man to get lost and slammed the door in his face.
“So there we were stuck with this helpless little skunk,” he said. “And we didn’t know what to do. But he looked like he was in distress so we got a hot-water bottle and mixed instant mashed potatoes with baby formula to feed him out of an eyedropper.”
As Miller became the little stray’s primary caretaker, the baby skunk began to bond with him, and the feeling was mutual. Without planning it, Miller had quietly become a member of the United States’ growing population of skunk owners – which numbers between 600,000 and 4 million, depending upon whom you ask.
But as a resident of Illinois, he also was breaking the law. Skunk ownership is illegal in this state as well as a handful of others, which is why he asked that his real name not be printed in the newspaper.
Although Miller had his skunk ownership thrust upon him, thousands of Americans every year purchase and adopt them by choice. “They’re unique and beautiful animals,” says Cheryl Royer, president of the Indiana chapter of Skunks as Pets Inc. “They’re more independent than a cat, they will come when you call them and they know their names. They’re intelligent, they have a beautiful fur coat and they are pretty low maintenance.”
That beautiful coat was once a curse for skunks, who were a fur-farm staple until pelt prices declined in the late ’40s. Then a 1952 truth-in-labeling act put a further damper on the sale of skunk fur, which often had been called by misleading names such as “midnight sable.” But when those same fur farms found they could turn a profit by selling the animals as pals, the pet-skunk industry started to take off.
Still, the biggest skunk pet boom has occurred in the last decade, largely because of pet clubs and the Internet, which link legal and illegal owners alike. “I’d say in the last five years it has really taken off, especially with the Internet, because people are getting more information and they are learning how to take care of them better,” Royer said.
Despite the enthusiasm generated by skunk clubs in legal states, owners in illegal states have to keep a low profile.
Three years after their first meeting, Miller still lives in the Chicago area with “Flower” (also a pseudonym), now a healthy 10-pound adult. He says his skunk makes a fairly ideal pet, one who offers plenty of companionship with little working-parent guilt as the animal’s nocturnal nature causes him to sleep most of the day.
But Flower is destined to be an indoor skunk for the rest of his days. Miller doesn’t take his pet out for walks, partly because Flower has not been de-scented — making run-ins with other animals risky — but mostly because Miller doesn’t want to be spotted by someone from the Department of Natural Resources. Because of a 1970 law banning skunk ownership in Illinois, DNR officials would most likely have to euthanize any “wild” skunk found living in a home.
“Striped skunks are the primary risk for rabies in the Midwest, including Illinois,” says Bob Bluett, wildlife biologist for the DNR. “It’s not necessarily true for other parts of the United States, because rabies tends to favor different species in different parts of the U.S. There are also no approved rabies vaccines for skunks, so vaccinating them is not an option. They fall into the better-safe-than-sorry category.”
Because the incubation period for rabies in skunks is between 10 days and six months, according to Bluett, the risk of getting the disease is almost nil for a skunk like Flower who has lived indoors for more than three years without any symptoms.
Still, Bluett says a skunk like Flower is not completely safe.
“My wife thinks that just because our cats stay inside, they won’t get anything,” he said, “but they still may rub noses with other cats through the screen.”
These safety attitudes have earned Illinois a reputation as an anti-skunk state.
“It’s funny because the guy who wrote the book on skunk care back in the ’60s was from Illinois,” said Royer. “Skunks were a big pet in Illinois in the ’60s. That’s why I was so surprised to see that your state fair is going to feature David Dempster and his Racing Stinkers this year. I just couldn’t believe it because they are so anti-skunk there.”
According to Ginny Laut, president of the American Domestic Skunk Association Inc., the Illinois town of Marengo used to be home to one of the top skunk-breeding farms in the U.S., until a farmer cross-bred domestic skunks with wild ones and ended up selling rabid skunk kittens all over the country.
Laut stresses that things like this don’t have to happen if breeding is properly regulated, which involves selling only skunks that have been out of the wild for three to four generations and have been quarantined for rabies.
In addition to being quarantined, all farm-bred skunks are de-scented (a process in which the scent glands are removed) at three to four weeks of age. Because Illinois law does not allow vets to de-scent skunks for private owners, many local underground skunk owners are living with what might seem like an olfactory time bomb in their homes.
Miller, however, doesn’t see it that way. “(Flower) was hand-raised from such a young age that I cannot imagine a circumstance in which he would actually spray. I have played with him roughly and thrown him up in the air and caught him. Plus I’ve heard skunks are loathe to spray until their lives are in danger.”
Experts agreethat the striped critters give plenty of signals before they squirt.
“It will warn you first,” Laut said, “stomping its feet at you, arching its back, flipping its tail up in the air and swinging the hind end around. When you get to stage No. 3, of flipping the tail and swinging the hind end, it means that you have not paid attention to its warnings. By that third step, forget it, buddy — you’re going to get it.”
And if you do get it, you may have one smelly problem on your hands and everywhere else, but not one that Laut hasn’t solved for many a caller to her skunk hotline (706-865-7734). And the remedy is not tomato juice.
“Have your neighbor, your husband or your boyfriend go down to the drug store and buy several bottles of Summer’s Eve Feminine Douche,” she said with no trace of jest in her voice. “Sponge the stuff all over your entire body and let it dry. There is nothing in it that can hurt you. It reduces the odor by about 75 or 95 percent. In about four hours, repeat it and it will get rid of the whole smell. Do the same thing to your dog.”
Some Internet skunksperts recommend the following concoction to counter the thiol compounds responsible for the odor: one quart of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide, 1/4 cup of baking soda and one teaspoon of liquid soap. Soak and scrub with this mixture, then wash off with tap water. To de-skunk the air in a house, Laut suggests simmering a pot of almost pure white vinegar on the stove for a couple of hours until the odor is absorbed.
Although Lisa Rose lives a mere hour from Chicago, she doesn’t have to worry about her skunk stinking up the house or being seen by the DNR. That’s because she lives in Michigan City, Ind., where purchasing and owning de-scented skunks is legal.
That doesn’t mean all her neighbors are comfortable with the idea of Pixie living in the ‘hood.
“When my kids’ friends come over, they fall in love with her and they want one too, but, of course, their mothers are horrified,” Rose said.
Rose said she had wanted to own a skunk for more than a decade, since she saw a woman selling baby skunks in a parking lot. Last year, she was able to realize her dream with the help of skunk Web sites and clubs that assisted her with information about purchasing and caring for the animals.
Laut, whose organization provides those services and more, says she believes the new cyber-skunk community and innovations in diet are major factors in a new longer life span for these pets, who long fell victim to liver and kidney disease at a young age. She estimates these advances have stretched their life expectancy from 5 to 14 years.
Although SAP and the ADSA agree on many things, their paths diverge on matters of skunk diet — one preferring Purina O.N.E. dog food and the other going for a homeopathic blend. But both groups will forget their differences Nov. 1 when they come together for the Supreme National Skunk Show, an annual event that showcases skunks of all colors (including silver and lavender) and stripes in Gainseville, Ga. And, of course, they are always joined by their love of a certain maligned animal that Royer’s Web site (www.geocities.com/heartland/prairie/1568/skunklady) promises will return its owner’s affection a hundredfold.
“They are absolutely adorable,” Laut said of her reasons for choosing skunks over cats or dogs. “They like to sleep in your lap, they like to be petted, they seek you out for companionship. You might wake up on a cold dreary winter morning with a fur ball curled up under your blanket sound asleep next to you. And they give kisses.”
