It sounds harsh, but if you can't get them to leave, you will have to trap them and kill them. If they like it there, they will not leave willingly. You cannot legally transport them to Quabbin or anyplace else. I believe the statute is "visiting a nuisance on one's neighbor." Plus, I don't have a truck I'd care to sacrifice to the transport. They're feral and even with the removal of the scent gland, they wouldn't make good pets. Believe me, we exhausted everything we could think of in the hopes of convincing our skunks to live elsewhere, but to no avail. Of course, living elsewhere could easily mean your neighbor's shed since it is close and keeps access to your food source. For 10 years, we had skunks living under our barn on and off. I felt that if I left them alone, they had "permission" to be there. Then, during one Thanksgiving, one of them sprayed under the barn, which is attached to our TV room. Despite open windows in 30 degree weather and enough incense to stock a headshop, the room was unusable for a week. Then, every time I went into the barn, one of them would saunter away, making me feel that at some point, I or a guest or worse, a small child, would startle the beast with the usual results. We hired Tom Olander, in Greenfield, Olander's Wildlife Control, to first put exclusion fencing around the house and barn. This is an L-shaped rabbit wire that is set deep enough to prevent them from digging under it from the outside in. We tried many herbal and natural suggestions. The skunks got in again and dug under the exclusion fencing from inside the house. We found where they got in and fenced that. They found another way in. In the evening, I could hear them under the floor, which is not a comfortable sound. So, in the end, we hired Tom to trap and euthanize the skunks. There was a family of 11 skunks living under our barn. There were several generations there and Tom said that they would continue to come back to their family nest to have additional generations. He uses a Have a Heart trap and a lethal injection which is as humane as killing an animal gets. He seems to take no joy in the killing, which I appreciate. There is no use for the fur. In the 19th century, they renamed the fur and used it for muffs and other similar things, but not today. The Joy of Cooking used to give recipes for skinning and cooking the meat, but in the last 20 years it has been revised and no longer talks much about game. In the course of trapping skunks, we caught a possum, which we let go. The goal was not to kill everything that moved on the property, but to get rid of the skunks who had become serious pests. Yes, it is due in a large part to human encroachment on the areas in which wild animals live that is causing the problem. The ready availability of food around human habitations also contributes to it. I am sorry about that and, as I said, for years, we attempted to share the property with them, largely successfully. But at a certain point, they became pests and we could no longer do it. Sorry to be so blunt, but that's been my experience. Don Lesser Pioneer Training, Inc. 14 Bobala Road Holyoke, MA 01040 (413) 536-1030 (phone) (413) 552-0472 (fax) dlesser at ptraining.com www.ptraining.com From: hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net [mailto:hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net] On Behalf Of MargotZalkind at aol.com Sent: Monday, June 25, 2007 5:59 PM To: Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net Cc: hidden-tech at hidden-tech.net Subject: [Hidden-tech] low tech or high tech? OK here is a challenge. we have a family of skunks living in a shed near our house. they casually saunter into our yard in the evening, looking for tasty snacks of grubs and worms. know of any easy way to scare them off? I heard about a sound device.. anyone have any experience with this, other than paying hundreds to hire someone to trap them and cart them off? Thanks all. MZ Margot Zalkind Margot at RowingEducation.org 413 585 9445 The Foundation for Rowing Education, Inc. www.rowingeducation.org <http://www.rowingeducation.org/> USRowing Safety Committee CoChair Member USRowing Masters Committee This message contains PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) named above. Any disclosure, distribution, copying or use of the information by others is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please advise the sender by immediate reply and delete the original message and any and all attachments. Thank you. _____ See what's free at AOL.com <http://www.aol.com?ncid=AOLAOF00020000000503> . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.hidden-tech.net/pipermail/hidden-discuss/attachments/20070626/cf1c0478/attachment-0005.html