More Adventures with Critters

Continued from last week...

Another incident I recall very well was with a skunk.

We were to relocate a large house near Hostyn. It was sitting on black land and had a concrete foundation around the perimeter of it. The 2x6 sill holding the building was resting on this six inch wide concrete wall and was bolted to the concrete every eight feet or so. My job was to crawl under the house and unbolt the square nuts with an open end “S” wrench.

There was only a 2x2 foot doorway leading under this house so it was pretty dark under there. A flash light wouldn’t do much good in locating these bolts and nuts so I had to slide my hand along the sill to locate each one. I never wore gloves when I worked so all I could do was hope I didn’t come in contact with any spiders, scorpions or snakes.

After I felt the nut on the flat 2x6, I would unscrew it with the wrench in the dark. After this was done I had to install a hydraulic jack under the sill in the center of the house to help it along as the crew proceeded to man the jacks on the outside. As we proceeded to lift the building a few inches off the foundation, there was more light to see with.

As I was laying on my stomach working my jack, I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye. After focusing a little more, about eight feet in front of me was a skunk. Now if you ever saw a skunk in a picture, you saw one with a nice fuzzy tail and fine furry body. Not this one. This had to be the ugliest, scariest, mangy looking skunk of all time. His tail was sticking straight up and minus the hair. It looked more like the tail of a large rat. Now this mangy looking thing was headed straight towards me. I knew I couldn’t move fast enough being on my stomach with only a few inches above me to move around in. what was I to do?

I knew he was probably rabid and eight feet was about as close to him as I wanted to get. So I picked up a handful of marble sized pebbles of dirt and tossed them right in front of him. I didn’t want to startle him too much cause I knew if he sprayed right then, I’d be in deep trouble. The first handful of pebbles stopped him momentarily and as I threw some more his way, he did change direction and proceeded to crawl under a concrete porch slab. I guess it was a darker place to hide at the time. We did load the house and move it away without disturbing him any more. So ended another day. Going to bed at night, I wondered what was in store for me tomorrow.