Seasonal Scents
S’mores, salty ocean breezes, veggie burgers on the grill, sweaty people on the bus — what’s the smell you associate the most with summer?
Rural areas support large skunk populations. Mostly, they don’t make much trouble. Raiding trash cans and digging up gardens occasionally are usually the limits of their depredations. Unless your dog has an unfortunate encounter, skunks rarely bother us.
Lately though, something is going on in the woods between the skunks and other critters. It’s not our dogs (thank God!), but something is causing them to emit their special perfume. More nights than not, the zephyr breeze carries the delicate scent of skunk to our wrinkling noses.
Garry: “Is that skunk I smell?”
Me: “Yep. Again. Not as close to the house as last time. Somewhere out in the back woods.”
Garry, a passionate believer in room deodorizing spray proceeds to spray the entire area and remarkably, it helps. Of course, almost any other smell is an improvement to “Odeur de Skunk.”
Pepe le Pew would be right at home around here lately. Maybe it’s the coyotes. Or the raccoons or the bobcat. Something is getting the skunks all riled up. I fervently hope they keep the war far from our windows. Because this summer, the scent that dominates, the smell which floats gently on the breeze is absolutely, no missing it, skunk.
Coconut suntan oil.
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There is absolutamente nuthin’ like the smell of skunk. (QoD speaks with much experience in all venues.)
Very reminiscent of napalm in the morning… yet, not quite as exquisite, or overwhelmingly devastating.
Could one light a skunk fart with a lighter, it might possibly be similar. Ahem… just sayin’… We won’t attempt it here. Even on a closed course, with a professional. 😀
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Even a faint whiff is bad … just a little bit wafting on an errant breeze can ruin your dinner.
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BBQ
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I prefer it to Pepe le Pew 🙂
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We have them all around Mecca, and the smell gets in the store quite often. It might help sell more air fresheners, though…
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Air fresheners, HAH! You can’t beat ole Pepe with an air freshener! Pepe is more powerful than that. More powerful than a locomotive and smellier, too.
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Wowza! I hope they stay away from your house! We don’t get much skunk where I live, but there are raccoons out the ying-yang, and they will do anything from kill your dog to kill your livestock to get into your trash. A real nuisance!
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I have lost cats to raccoons. If they get into your house, they can do enormous damage. They look so cute! They live everywhere, city, country and suburbs. I met a huge — snarling — one that took over my back patio when we lived in a tiny apartment on Beacon Hill in Boston. One quick discussion with him and I decided I didn’t want to go out there anyway.
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We have them around here too. Just last week – one woke me up in the middle of the night. It’s scent was fierce. It must have been pretty close to the house.
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It’s such a penetrating and enduring smell. And it seems to travel on the wind for miles. It can put serious damper on your summer barbecue!
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Fortunately I don’t think we have skunks in the UK. Though I’d like to smell one just once to see if they really smell as bad as the cartoons imply 🙂
Cut grass is my summer smell.
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Bet you do 🙂
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1203529/Hold-nose-Colony-wild-skunks-UK.html
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Eek! They look really cute, though 🙂
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They are. Smart and make nice pets, if you can remove the stench gland 🙂
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Hilariously repulsive, Marilyn, or possibly vice versa; skunk smell is one I’d travel many miles to avoid. Hope whatever’s setting the little buggers off stops soon! xxx
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Maybe there are a lot of baby skunks out there who haven’t learned proper control yet. Still, I’m with you. I’d like it to go away and stay away. I know our little friends are there … we’ve seen them.
Oddly enough, when de-scented and raised by people, they are adorable pets. Smart and very much like cats. My former sister-in-law had a litter she raised that had been orphaned. We declined to take one home with us (we had enough cats and dogs already), but they were charming.
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We are close enough to the edge of town to get skunk perfume….but I’m sure not as often as you guys get it. 🙂
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We’ve lived here 14 years. This is the first year we’ve smelled them, though we have seen them round the trash bins and digging in the gardens. They like eating iris and tulip bulbs.
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Sometimes I wish my sense of smell was as bad as my hearing.
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Even if it were, skunk comes through. It’s a very PERMEATING scent.
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Hi Marilyn,
We have had a skunk let loose right under our bedroom window. It was not a gentle pew. It smelt like the house was on fire. There was no waiting for it to dissipate, you had to get up and move to another part of the house. If you closed the window it was stuck inside. If you left the window open you were no better off. There was absolutely nothing that could cover up the smell. It happens when there is some discord in nature. It isn’t the fondest scent of summer, it the scent of my roses that take my fancy.
Leslie
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I didn’t say I LIKE it. No one likes it, not even skunks. Skunks will abandon a nest in which one of them has let loose. But it has been this summer’s dominant odor. The roses don’t have a chance when pitted against skunk. Ugh. I hope it doesn’t get any closer. That would be horrible.
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Well I had a good laugh. Definitely no comparison, but I can see why some people would recall some summer scents with the (faint) smell of skunk. It is all part of nature.
Leslie
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Shame we do not have “smellies” blogs. I have never smelt a skunk in my whole life. We only see them in zoos in Switzerland. Something must be missing in my life.
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This is something you might want to miss. Really. Skunks smell uniquely horrible.
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