A skunk is a skunk, is a skunk!

Skunks in the Crawl Space

By Online Saturday, May 22, 2010
- Will Noon

The spectre of betrayal spreads across our land like the foul odor of a skunk, that comes first as a faint but decidedly unpleasant hint carried on the breezes. But with every gentle zephyr, that hint grows rapidly until it becomes a jarring assault that threatens to overwhelm our very senses.

Our first impulse is to close the windows tightly and hope that the invading stench will dissipate and soon go away completely.

But then we realize that skunks have crawled into the crawl space beneath our home through a breach in the foundation.

The breach in the foundation of our home was not one made entirely by the skunks.

They, being excellent excavators, merely enlarged the opportunity they found to enter.

The breach started as one of many small cracks in the solid concrete foundation that our house had been securely placed upon by it’s builders.

We knew of those cracks and even observed the weathering of those cracks by the fierce winds and pounding rains that always assault the houses of men.

We watched the weathering process turn a crack into a hole, which in turn allowed the winds and rains to enter as a trickle and later a flood. We noticed the ants and spiders and other insects that established a beachhead as they invaded the space enclosed by our foundation.

Many years passed by during which we always found an excuse to not seal the breaches.

Oh, we did spray some insect poison around the entrances on several occasions, but times were changing and our life was good, and we deserved to live it to the fullest.

No time for holes in foundations.

Our family was growing, our responsibilities at work were increasing as was our pay. But we began to notice on a vague level that even as our income continued to grow at a fairly regular rate, and although we could discern no immediate nor appreciable threats to our way of life, that things just didn’t seem to be as good as they were “in the good ol’ daysâ€