How do you trap a skunk without it spraying? Here is how to catch one under your house.
Skunk is a macro pest that is usually found in households. They are cat-sized mammals with black and white striped fur that is capable of causing environmental pollution in any place they find themselves. They are mainly predominant in Northern America.
They are identified by their foul odor. Whenever a skunk feels threatened, it releases a foul and irritating liquid from its anus towards the attacker. This foul odor makes skunk always a pest, never a pet.
Trapping A Skunk: 4 Methods
There are several reasons why skunks migrate to people’s homes. Sometimes, they are looking for sparsely populated places to call home. Skunks are shy animals and love to stay away from places where there are lots of people or lots of other animals.
More so, skunks may seek accommodation for reproductive reasons, mostly in springtime. When female skunks are ready to reproduce, they tend to search for somewhere homely to bring forth life.
The problems with housing skunks are caused by skunks themselves. They tamper with the vegetables in the garden, burrow holes around the garden. And the worst of all is during the breeding season when female skunks are in ‘heat’- this is when the female reproductive cycle begins.
Once the breeding season begins, the male skunk will try to express his mating desire. If the male skunk is unfortunate, and the female is not ready, she will spray the male to communicate her rejection of him. When a female skunk sprays, the landlords are the ones to bear the brunt.
The horrible odor of the spray will take over the house and is capable of lingering for more up to 6months. The frustrating aspect is that it is almost impossible to get rid of the smell without getting rid of the skunks.
Even after you get rid of the skunk, you will have to get rid of the smell with a special chemical that was made to eradicate the skunk’s odor.
It is better to contact a skunk expert to help you eradicate skunks under your house.
How to Catch A Skunk Under Your House
The truth is, skunks are not always homeless, and they create a home for themselves from place to place before they settle in your home, depending on how accommodating the area is to them. They settle and make themselves comfortable in your home, releasing awful odors whenever they face a predator.
One of the main reasons why the skunk could get under your house is because they are homeless and are seeking shelters in a more friendly and accommodating environment, especially in springtime.
Find a way is to trap it and send it away. Killing skunks will create long-lasting air pollution that is almost impossible to eradicate. Therefore, it is advisable to trap the animal; after that, you can embark on preventive measures against the re-visitation of skunks.
You can trap a skunk by following these steps
Step 1- Get a live cage trap that is at least 30 inches long and 15 inches high so there can be enough room, and it won’t look suspicious to the skunk.
Step 2- Place the cage trap firm into the ground and make sure you set it in places you might have seen skunks.
Step 3- Cover the cage with clothing or something to not jolt the skunk on the possibility that this might be a trap. If the exterior looks good enough, then you are certain to catch a skunk.
Step 4- Bait the skunk with something of a meat-based bait, something like cat food. They are the best bait food to use against skunks as they also belong to the weasel family.
Set the bait food from the direction you might have seen it down to the inside of the cage.
Step 5- In this stage, you must be very careful, so you don’t get spatted on with an annoyingly offensive smell. Here you must apply caution.
Once it is inside the cage, you then approach the cage with caution holding a wide piece of clothing as a preventive measure; it can be a towel or old clothing.
Be sure that it doesn’t see you coming at all, and then cover the cage. If it cannot see you, then it can’t spray since it won’t know where to spray too.
But if it eventually sees you, know that it will get furious and agitated, so you have no option than to watch out till it gets calm.
There are three (3) ways to know when a skunk is about to spray, and they are as follows:
- It will raise its tail. Once this happens, just know it is pissed so back off.
- It will start pacing back and forth and even hitting on the ground.
- It will turn its rectum towards you. If you see this, you have to run as fast as you can so you don’t get sprayed because it definitely will spray its awful liquid.
You should also know that there are adults and younger. If you are dealing with a younger skunk, then you have to handle it with caution because they are said to be more brutal than adults. And they spray premature liquid, which is said to be more irritating.
And the last step is taking the skunk to a clear area and let it out; it is called relocating.
In this stage, you can just pick up the cage after it has calmed down and then put it in your car trunk, drive off to a far distance and let it out.
That means you have just relocated the skunk to a new environment, which is very much legal. But if you can’t go through that stress, then just kill it.
Some substances are harmful to the human body; such substances can get rid of a skunk in no time. That should do the trick.
Several things attract skunks to an area, namely;
- Food 2. Water 3. Shelter
So you can get rid of them by reducing or eliminating the things that attract them.
Also, some things can keep them off your area (things they hate), namely;
- Citrus
- Ammonia
Funny enough, just as much as we hate and despise their bad scent they also hate some certain odors themselves, odors like mothballs and predators’ urine, e.g. (dog, coyote, etc.)
They are also known to devour anything, including garbage, human waste, small rodents, larvae, bird eggs, bugs.
You can also scare a skunk away with a flashlight, once you shine your torch to it, it will runoff. Stomping your feet or shouting can also do the trick of scaring the animal away from your property.
Are Skunks Good To Have Around?
If you want a healthy lawn, skunks can help there too. They love grass-destroying grubs and can eat a large number of them. That makes them beneficial to farmers, gardeners, and homeowners when properly controlled. The smell of this critter is an issue.
Skunks are not in any way good to have around. They emit a very horrible odor, and their waste is dangerous. It is important to eliminate skunks as soon as you notice them in your space.
The following are the ways of eradicating skunks from your property;
- Trapping
The best means of getting rid of skunks is not by killing them with a gun or disinfecting the environment. The aftermath of these methods is living with a very horrible and awful stench for a very long period.
Trapping skunks is the ideal way of getting rid of the animal. To trap a skunk, you need to get a cage and then bait the cage with vegetables and fruits. After that, you can place the cage at the hole or burrow made by the skunk.
Another method of trapping is to trap the entrance of their hole that will make them get out, once they are out, you can then seal the entrance.
Once you get hold of a skunk, you should help find a home in a place that is more than 10 miles away from your environment. Try to cover the cage with a cloth to prevent the skunk from spraying you.
After resettling the skunk and her family, you can start refilling every hole created by skunks to avoid a second coming.
- Taking Preventive Measures
Another way to get rid of skunks is to get rid of anything that attracts them. Make sure the environment is clean and get rid of insects and bugs, which are among skunks’ favorite.
Guard the garden in such a way that a skunk cannot penetrate. Also, ensure that there are no litters of leftover dropping outside the garbage cans.
Ensure that the pet’s food is inside the house, not outside. If you keep a clean environment that does not attract insects or bugs and get rid of any litter of rotten fruits or vegetables or pet’s leftovers outside the house, skunks will not be able to come close to your environment.
- Using Repellent
You can also use repellents to ward off skunks. Things like mothballs, tabasco, or a predator’s urine are known to repel the animal.
To ward off skunks, you have to keep using these things around the house over and over again even though the effectiveness of this method is questionable, at least we know that skunks despise mothball, it hates tabasco and a predator’s urine.