Pardon the smell!

Phew! You might be smelling skunks more often as spring approaches. This is the beginning of skunk mating season, and males can sometimes be overly aggressive in their efforts to father babies with uninterested females. Skunks do not generally spray each other, but the exception occurs this time of year when a female will spray a male who ignores her warnings to back off. (If only every species had a built-in method to scare away creeps!) As unpleasant as this odor may be for us, it won’t last more than a week or two, and it’s a sign that you have breeding-age females in your neighborhood. And that’s not a bad thing: a female and her kits will eat thousands of grubs, cockroaches, mice, and rats, keeping your local ecosystem balanced and healthy.