Posted by SkunkFriend on April 28, 2003 at 16:31:26:
Hi. I'm new to this board. Just wanted to relate the story of how my wife and I rescued a wild baby striped skunk. Toward the end of Sept., 2002, a weed trimmer broke of a nest of baby skunks at the facility I work at. They were under a wide concrete walkway which had about a foot of clearance under it. I brought 2 of the baby skunks home and a co-worker took the other one. I estimated they were 4 to 5 weeks old. We immediately started bottle feeding them baby puppy formula. They were both males and we named them Winky and Binky. They both seemed to be growing and doing fine when Binky took the pnemonia or something and died seven days after I brought them home. We were keeping them in our bathroom in a new cat bed we bought for them. Winky continued to grow and developed teeth so we graduated him to soft foods (vegetables and Little Champions packet dog food). Now Winky had never been descented or neutered. We live in a rural area on 8 acres of wooded land. As he got bigger, we would take him in the back yard and let him dig and find bugs and stuff. He seemed to really enjoy this and got real proficient at digging up bugs, grubs, etc. The only time he ever sprayed was the first time we had him outside, the cat jumped him and he gave her a mild spraying. She never messed with him again. This was when he was about 4 months old. We kept him over six months in our home (except when we took him outside in the mornings or evenings). The last couple of days we had him, he was starting to scratch at the outside doors a lot wanting to go outside. I think he was wanting to find a female and mate. On April 5, just at dark, he was wanting out really bad, so I took him out under our night light to eat some june bugs (he really loved these). When I picked him up and brought him to the house to put him in, he started squirming to get down when I got to the door, so I put him down on the carport and he ran out into the woods so we let him go. We thought he would probably come back for food (even though we were still going to leave him outside), but we haven't seen him since, and it has been over three weeks. I wonder if he will ever come back? We had grown very fond of him and would like to see him again even though we have put down a deposit on a domesticated, descented baby skunk that we can keep legally. So if you ever wonder if anyone has raised an unscented wild striped skunk in their home, it's true that they have.
