Kyle & Chris: Skunk Hunters

I'm not sure if I blogged about this but about 2 weeks ago Kyle encountered a dead rat in our backyard. We were traumatized upon this discovery and wondered if this was an isolated incident or if rats were terrorizing our neighborhood by night. Well, that day Kyle bought some rat poison packets to spread around our shed, the garage, & the attic. He checked the packets every day for signs of disturbance until a week later we noticed the packets in the garage didn't have little bite marks in them, no.......they had been ferociously ripped open and all the poison pellets had been eaten.

"Something's going to die" Kyle declared.

5 days later.......

Yesterday as the sun greeted our eyes, the smell of death greeted our noses. This was it....we knew it was coming. At lunch time Kyle and his friend Kevin scoured the backyard, under all the bushes, in the shed...nothing. In the evening Kyle returned to investigate some more and decided something had died under our shed.....EEEEEKS! Yucky. barf. disgusting.

Kyle visited the neighbor behind us, Julie, who said she too had scoured her backyard and had smelled the same stench. They discovered a hole leading from her backyard to under our shed. Bingo. Something was down there. But what? The unknown is the most scary part. So Kyle had to figure out a way to lift the shed and retract said animal (gag). I humbly called our friend, Chris, who lives nearby to come help Kyle because there was no way I could lift that shed.


God bless Chris & Kyle. The heroes of the story. They attacked the shed with the fierceness of 2 animal pest control ninjas.


1st issue: In order to lift the shed, they had to remove a whole LOAD of flattened moving boxes that we had stored in there.

2nd issue: As they removed the boxes, hundreds (and I mean hundreds) of huge, flying, 1 1/2" cockroaches swarmed out of the boxes where they were hiding. Chris and Kyle were in the thick of it and sprayed RAID like crazy, while Julie the neighbor and I screamed like crazy at the size and magnitude of these roaches. (No better way to bond with your neighbors than over dead rodents, huh?)

3rd issue: Lifting the shed...not so easy. We (more like Chris & Kyle) used lots of boards, shovels, and various tools to lever it up.

4th issue: The STANK! Man, there it was.....a stinky, stanky, skanky skunk! (While Julie the neighbor had retreated to the safety of her home and would not come out, I stood there panicked, horrified, yet strangely intrigued at the sight)

5th issue: Getting it out. Kyle had to roll the nasty skunk out with a pitchfork and wrap it up in 2 trash bags. (more gags)

The deed is done. The skunk is gone and, man, was it NAAAAS-tay.....

Question: Where did this skunk come from? We live in the middle of the city, not the boondocks? Makes you think....what in the world is crawling around YOUR house in the middle of the night...