Skunks

Striped skunks use a wide variety of habitats but prefer forest borders, brushy areas, and open, grassy fields broken by wooded ravines and rock formations. Permanent water is usually close by. Skunks can dig their own dens, but prefer to use those excavated by badgers, woodchucks, or other animals. Den sites also include stumps, caves, rock piles, old buildings, junk piles, sheds, wood piles and dry drainage tiles or storm sewers.

Striped skunks are active at night and occasionally during the daylight hours of early morning or late evening. They live in an area 1 to 1 1/2 miles in diameter, but use only a small part of this on any given night. While skunks aren’t likely to move long distances, some have traveled as far as six miles away from where they were captured.

Skunks are slow-moving and docile. Their senses of sight, hearing, and smell are poor compared to many predators. When cornered or pursued closely, they usually face the intruder, arch their backs, raise their tails, and stamp the ground with their front feet. If a skunk’s warning is ignored, it turns around with its tail raised and facing the threat so that it’s in a good position for discharging its musk. Most predators avoid skunks, but domestic dogs, coyotes, badgers and great-horned owls kill a few. Diseases, vehicles and farm machinery are more important sources of mortality

Striped skunks eat a lot during the fall and build a thick layer of fat by the end of October. Building a fat reserve provides energy through the winter when they spend most of their time sleeping inside dens. Skunks are not true hibernators. They venture out of their dens for short distances when temperatures are near the freezing mark and snow conditions are favorable. As many as 10 skunks have been found together in some winter dens, but many live alone.

Skunks eat equal amounts of plant and animal foods during fall and winter. Insects are their preferred food, and make up the bulk of their diet in spring and summer. Bees, grasshoppers and beetles are common fare. Skunks also eat mice, young rabbits, ground squirrels, voles, birds and bird eggs. Plant foods include corn, black cherries, nightshades and ground-cherries. Skunks sometimes eat carrion.

Skunks often dig for grubs (the immature life stage of beetles), leaving conical holes 2 to 3 inches across and about as deep. Removal of these pests is beneficial to humans. However, the holes can be unsightly on golf courses and residential lawns. Yards that are fertilized and watered throughout the summer tend to have more grubs and provide good feeding areas for skunks. Using an approved pesticide that kills the grubs usually solves the problem by sending the skunks somewhere else to look for food.

Breeding begins in February and lasts through March. The pregnancy period ranges from 62 to 72 days. A single litter of four to 10 young is born from early May to early June. Newborns don’t have much hair, but still show faint black and white color markings. Litter mates can have different patterns, ranging from broad white stripes to nearly no stripes at all. Young skunks begin to leave the den and take short trips with their mother by late June or early July. They grow rapidly, nearing adult size by their tenth month.