Help?
I declared war on racoons for eating one my favorite fish. I was Switzerland neutral with skunks, but I caught a teenager and when I went to release it, it sprayed right up to the concrete porch entrance to our house.
The smell is… gah. Can I wash that out somehow? Out of concrete and plants?
Old method is tomato juice, I’d go with that or maybe something stronger, like muriatic acid. Or napalm.
Actually I’m pretty sure it got our door as well which is aluminum.
How does one accidentally catch a skunk?
Live trap, i would guess
Can you bottle it up and send it to BCBS?
Well, however you did it, best I can offer is to echo what Houngan said. I had a dog that tangled with a skunk and got thoroughly doused in that stuff and we that was about the best plan we could come up with. And it worked, I guess? Eventually? At least the smell was diminished and eventually went away. But that dog was pretty unhappy with himself for a good while.
Generally speaking a very rough cleaning compound should do it (not the acid, which will ruin your door) but I’m assuming that it’s a mixture of things that make it stop sticking (detergents) and things that denature all the nasty phenols and whatnot that produce the stink. For the door, a good scrub with a strong bleach mixture, a hose down, and then throw away everything involved that touched it should do. For a concrete porch, that’s where I would go with heavy acid if you don’t have a pressure washer handy. Get it into the ground where nature can denature it.
Tomato Juice and/or Hydrogen Peroxide. My dog was skunked many, many times. However i would be careful of using Hydrogen Peroxide on furniture etc.
Dogs can die from a very bad exposure to skunk spray, so we used to keep a supply of both Tomato Juice and Hydrogen Peroxide handy.
I do have a pressure washer! But I don’t think I can load the soap tray with tomato soup.
Sorry, I thought it might be obvious, but I was using a live trap to catch the evil raccoons who have decided the trash and lady dog food across the street is t enough, and wanted to add live fish to their diet as well. I’ll be relocating them several miles away across the river.
Vanilla also helps with the smell.
One thing that might help - I know they make odor absorbers usually on sale in the Motorhome section of Walmart.
The pressure washer is beside rather than with, the tomato juice. You have a sticky, stinky chemical to deal with. You can kill it with acid (tomato juice, muriatic) or with bases (bleach) or physically dislodge it and let it denature (detergent, pressure washer). It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure.
Ahhh I get it! I like the pressure washer with detergent idea because I think tomato juice will just attract more animals.
To avoid attracting further animals, you have to slightly acidify the tomato juice. Drink six or seven Bloody Marys and pee all over the walk.
Better yet, how did he know it was a teenager?
Not a baby, not an adult :)
We’ve used and recommended a pasty mixture of Hydrogen Peroxide, Baking Soda, and Blue Dawn dish detergent for unfortunate pets. I’m sure you can create something similar that’ll help your situation.
ALSO, knocking on lots of wood right now.
Vinegar is also a natural acid (acetic) that you could use to up the acid level in the tomato juice if desired. However it would add its own fragrance to the mix.
We also had a critter get a fish from our modest fish pond. We were not sure if racoon or one of the local fisher birds, so I got one of those sprayers attached to a sensor. So far the fish have been safe, but it has blasted my wife when she forgot to turn off the water source before entering the area around the pond.
So 2 nights I heard the most hideous screaming back by my winter bog. I set a trap there because what I assume is a raccoon keeps pooping on my little waterfall stone. At first I was scared the sound was coming right from my pond and they were fishing there again, but then I heard the gnashing of teeth and scrambling. So I ran to the back corner of my yard to see what was up and as best I can tell it was a racoon and skunk fighting as it was pretty intense smell, and the racoon cries (sounds like a baby screaming) was easy to identify.
Next morning I check the trap back there and what do I find. The same dumb adolescent squirrel got himself caught for the 3rd time! Jokes on me I guess cause he’s getting free cat food as I just let him out.
