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Skunk — Part 2
Images coming soon.
Generally there are very few skunks awake in December and January. In some seasons I have tramped the woods daily without seeing so much as one of their footprints during either of these months. And again, their tracks will be fairly numerous throughout the winter; and this does not depend entirely on the mildness or severity of the season either.
Early in February they are pretty certain to put in an appearance, sparingly while the cold weather lasts, but after the first really penetrating thaw the snow in all woods is thickly punched with their footprints, and for yards about their holes it takes on the colour of the dirt brought up from the depths on their feet.
Now that they are fairly awake and hungry, cold weather is powerless to keep them indoors. During the still cold nights of February they shuffle about over the snow-crust from sunset to sunrise, judging from the amount of ground they manage to cover each night.
They are now very different creatures from the heavy-bodied sluggards of the autumn. Those that can still boast a goodly layer of fat on their ribs must soon part with it. Insects in February are so scarce as hardly to be worth considering at all, an occasional grub or beetle dug out of a moulding stump being about all that can be safely counted on at this season. For their daily sustenance the skunks are now obliged to kill creatures far more active than themselves, and I have always wondered how, even in their reduced state of flesh, they can possibly compete successfully with the foxes and weasels in the chase.
It is hard to imagine one, even though half famished, making so much as a short dash of sufficient speed to enable it to seize so swift an animal as a rabbit, yet in one way or another they manage to do so quite frequently. It is probable that they often succeed in surprising them in their holes, for while the wood-chuck burrows, which the rabbits occupy, are nearly always constructed with several openings, the simple-minded creatures almost invariably make no effort to keep more than one of them open, allowing all the rest to become closed with snow and ice early in the winter.
As the snow grows less there is a marked tendency among the skunks to abandon the woods and thickets for the more open land, where they may hunt for meadow-mice about the newly exposed patches of moist turf, and snap up such snakes as have been driven from their winter retreats by the melting snow.
Whenever the frost has left the soil sufficiently, they dig out narrow pits as deep as they are able to reach with their forepaws, the long claws of which enable them to rake out the soil with great rapidity. These little excavations, each with its accompanying pile of dirt, are to be seen anywhere during the warm months in regions where skunks abound.
They are undoubtedly made in search of insects, but just what particular kind are oftenest obtained in this way I have never been able to discover.
With the increasing warmth of the season, bugs of all kinds begin to crawl out of their hiding places on all sides to breed and multiply, and these, with mice and reptiles, serve to keep the skunks in food until the nesting season of birds comes on. But it is probably short rations at best, and with characteristic boldness and indifference they visit barns and farm buildings, where they generally do more good than harm, living largely on mice and rats and whatever meat is to be picked up about the ground. Still, when temptation offers in the shape of fowls roosting within reach, the old weasel instinct is likely to be aroused, and the skunk proves his ability as a hunter of big game.
In May food begins to be fairly abundant and easily procured, such as birds' nests and new families of mice, and the steadily increasing supply of bugs and reptiles.
It is at this time that the little skunks are led forth by their parent to receive instructions in the necessary art of getting a living. They present a most attractive and not by any means uncommon spectacle on warm, still evenings in early summer; the old one moving leisurely along, with half a dozen youngsters in her train like Indians on the war-path.
The black and white of the young ones is even more sharply contrasted than that of their parents, as if new and unworn by use, the short fur lying smooth and even without mixing where the opposing colours come together.