Author: peter

Today I got my second look at the skunk who has been inhabiting the space below our house since last year. It turns out that “Murray,” as we’ve named him, is actually “Marie,” and she has at least six little babies keeping her company.
We saw six baby skunks today, after we managed to capture one in a trap. After repeated failed attempts by a professional pest control service to capture the skunk, I took a friend’s advice and baited the trap with a leftover zucchini and orange, instead of the cat food the pest controllers had recommended (and used to successfully catch our neighbor’s cat – twice).
This morning, my wife looked out the window and saw that we had indeed caught a skunk. I observed that it looked rather small. Later, she saw that it was small because it’s just a baby, and that two of its siblings had come to attempt to rescue it. This was the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time, as all three worked together to try to find a weakness in the trap.
They were soon joined by momma Skunk (“Marie”), who worked furiously to get her baby out of the trap. Her efforts were hampered by her babies, who crowded around her, and whom she would drag, one at a time, back under the house by their necks.
I went out when the mother was gone and stuck a piece of cardboard over the trap so the baby wouldn’t bake in direct sunlight, and we called the pest controllers.
We went shopping, and returned a few hours later to find the mother still there, working furiously to free her baby. She’d dug holes around the trap, trying to get underneath, and as of a few minutes ago, managed to flip the trap on its side. Of course, since it’s latched shut, she’d not going to get it out, so my wife is convinced me, against my better judgement, to assist her in setting the baby free.
So if you don’t see any new posts in the near future, you’ll know it’s because I am busy bathing myself in baking soda and vinegar. Wish me luck.
As luck would have it, my wife’s ex just showed up to drop her son off. She asked if he knew anything about skunks and, ‘lo and behold, he does! He walked right up to the trap, grabbed it, put it in the back of his pickup, and the skunk sprayed! Luckily it was under a blanket that we don’t care about. Awesome skunk removal timing on his part! I guess I need to buy him a beer or two now.
Update: We gave him four.

Ever wonder how much caffeine really is in that Starbucks coffee or your Mountain Dew? Want to know which late-night pick-me-up will turn it into an all-nighter? Check out Energy Fiend to find out.

I had a rather lame day, which included a DNS outage (took down paradigmcc.com for a while), an insurance agency’s WAN connection dropping, a medical practice’s scheduling calendar for the next quarter getting deleted, two missed appointments, waiting for hours for technical support to return my calls, and being generally crazy-busy from 8 AM to 6 PM.
So, at home, working late, I prepared to wrap up my day by putting the finishing touches on a few IT policy documents for one of my clients. (You may find this hard to believe, but it’s somewhat relaxing compared my other daily work activities).
My Boxer, Kali, however, had other plans. Plans which apparently involved Murray. Who is Murray? Why, Murray is the skunk who lives under our house! Apparently Kali arranged to have a little meet-up and the result was that the family and I spent the rest of the evening dousing the stupid dog in tomato juice, vinegar, baking soda, and dish soap. And now the house stinks. It’s not like regular skunk smell either. It’s like some sort of gamma-irradiated skunk or something from the black lagoon. This is one nasty Mephitis.
Keep this in mind the next time you feel tempted to say your day “can’t possibly get any worse.”