Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Barely Keeping His Head above Water - Literally!

Yesterday morning I went to do a carpenter ant job here in Woodbury. I checked in with the customer, told him what I was going to do, and went to the the truck to get my equipment. As I started toward the back of the house, I noticed they had an in ground swimming pool in the back yard. As I got a little closer, I noticed something in the pool. It was a young skunk, probably about 8 weeks old, who apparently had fallen in, on one of his first trips out of the nest with mom and his siblings. The poor little guy appeared to be "skunk" paddling in slow motion. He was going just fast enough to keep his head above water. I have no idea how long he had been in there, but he was obviously extremely exhausted. I went and told the customer what was going on, and asked him if he might have a 2x6 or 2x8 that I could slide into the pool, to give him something to crawl out on. He said he didn't have one, but he had a long handled net that was used to clean stuff out of the pool. So I took that to the pool, extended it almost all the way out (about 15' long), and placed it under the skunk and scooped him gently out of the pool and placed him on the lawn. He stood there for a minute, then made a half hearted attempt to shake himself off, but you could tell he decided he should just rest for a while. I kept my eye on him, and proceeded to close up the net handle. As I was putting it back, I noticed the classic strong skunk smell. I turned around and the little guy was gone, but to show his gratitude at being rescued, he had sprayed in the net while he was being lifted out of the pool. Nobody got sprayed, but the back yard was "stunk" up pretty good for a while. You're welcome, little skunk!

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