Well, I guess that's one way.

[Diggin It]

Last few mornings as I start my daily routine, I've been smelling a skunk in one area. Always the same area, not like it was wandering around and marking overnight. Once I got more than 20-30 feet from that area, no more smell. Came to the conclusion it was probably dead near there and predators weren't having any part of it. Started checking under bushes and other places. Finally found it ... at the bottom of my 30" deep pool in a few inches of green mossy nasty water. Pool had been much higher, nearly full a few days ago from all the rain, so I had pumped it down in preparation for spring cleaning. I'm guessing Pepe had been there longer than that, but the deeper water masked the LePew.

Oh yeah, there was a rabbit in there too.

Gonna need a good cleaning, with bleach.

 

[oosik]

Throw both of the critters out in the bushes. The coyotes will clean them right up. Many years ago I burned my garbage in the old standard - 55 gallon barrel. I had many skunks. I may have thought I was burning my garbage - actually, I was cooking it for the skunks. I quit burning after an accident that started a small fire. No more skunks.

I'd whack every one I ran up against. Took them to a specific location and left them. Within two day the body was gone. Then one summer eve - saw a coyote running across one of my meadows. He had a dead skunk in his mouth.

I have one specific location where everything that dies - mice, pocket gophers, porcupines, skunks - is placed. The local coyotes do an excellent job of cleanup. Originally - tried burying dead critters. Coyotes would find the spot and dig them up. Even at a burial depth of four feet.

Man - that must have been a wild smell - rotten & stinking.

 

[fried1765]

Throw both of the critters out in the bushes. The coyotes will clean them right up. Many years ago I burned my garbage in the old standard - 55 gallon barrel. I had many skunks. I may have thought I was burning my garbage - actually, I was cooking it for the skunks. I quit burning after an accident that started a small fire. No more skunks.

I'd whack every one I ran up against. Took them to a specific location and left them. Within two day the body was gone. Then one summer eve - saw a coyote running across one of my meadows. He had a dead skunk in his mouth.

I have one specific location where everything that dies - mice, pocket gophers, porcupines, skunks - is placed. The local coyotes do an excellent job of cleanup. Originally - tried burying dead critters. Coyotes would find the spot and dig them up. Even at a burial depth of four feet.

Man - that must have been a wild smell - rotten & stinking.

Yup, I throw dead animals, or animal parts in the field.
Always .... gone the next morning.

 

[CalG]

Yep!

I put the dead critters on an old stump out back. They are always gone the next morning.

Guess what comes for them?

Skunks!

Go figure.....

 

[Diggin It]

Yeah, they got tossed under a bush down the hill. I haven't checked this morning.

Been wanting to get rid of that skunk though. It and I have come face to face in the yard a few times.

 

[MossRoad]

Don't you have a winter cover?

 

[dodge man]

Something I learned several years ago was that owls don't have a sense of smell. They will often kill skunks and eat them. Often when you get the skunk smell it will be from an owl.

 

[Bird]

When I saw the title of this thread, it reminded me of one of my favorite gospel groups, the Blackwood Brothers Quartet and J. D. Sumner when James Blackwood said, "Well, I guess that's one way . . . .
He Means All The World To Me - Blackwood Brothers - On Stage - 1963 - YouTube

 

[DrRod]

Reminded me of a post in a thread on staring brush piles. Someone wrote in that they take an empty oil bottle, fill it with gas, and set it on top of the pile. Then they light a wad of paper at one side of the pile and then stand back and fire a 22 into the bottle. Someone replied "well there's one way to do it." I laugh every time I think of it.

 

[homesteader13]

Throw both of the critters out in the bushes. The coyotes will clean them right up. Many years ago I burned my garbage in the old standard - 55 gallon barrel. I had many skunks. I may have thought I was burning my garbage - actually, I was cooking it for the skunks. I quit burning after an accident that started a small fire. No more skunks.

I'd whack every one I ran up against. Took them to a specific location and left them. Within two day the body was gone. Then one summer eve - saw a coyote running across one of my meadows. He had a dead skunk in his mouth.

I have one specific location where everything that dies - mice, pocket gophers, porcupines, skunks - is placed. The local coyotes do an excellent job of cleanup. Originally - tried burying dead critters. Coyotes would find the spot and dig them up. Even at a burial depth of four feet.

Man - that must have been a wild smell - rotten & stinking.

We put everything in "the pit" on the very backside of our homestead. Waterfowl, harvested dear, Roadkill, varmints, expired chickens, food scrap bones, etc. Probably pushing around 3 or four hundred separate animal carcasses in there over the last 10 years. if somebody ever dug that up a hundred years from now they are going to think it was a mass burial site lol

 

[Wagtail]

On a different angle... I once found a young, drowned, brush-tailed possum in the horse's round poly water trough. The reason was that it obviously slipped in whilst having a drink but couldn't get back out.

So I bought some plastic 'gutter mesh' and screwed a section onto the rim of the trough so that it hung inside = effectively making a "scramble net" for anything to be able to get out.

I haven't found any critters in any of my horse troughs since doing this (6+ years).

 

[MossRoad]

On a different angle... I once found a young, drowned, brush-tailed possum in the horse's round poly water trough. The reason was that it obviously slipped in whilst having a drink but couldn't get back out.

So I bought some plastic 'gutter mesh' and screwed a section onto the rim of the trough so that it hung inside = effectively making a "scramble net" for anything to be able to get out.

I haven't found any critters in any of my horse troughs since doing this (6+ years).

I found a dead squirrel in our above ground pool one summer. I had taken the ladder out of the pool so the cleaning robot wouldn't get tangled in the ladder, and forgot to put the ladder back in. I felt kinda bad for the poor thing. I was on its side on the bottom, with it's tail strait up like a scared cat, slowly spinning round and round in the center of the pool with the current.

 

[Doofy]

We have an old c-band satellite dish that is upside down in the woods behind the house. This is our alter of dead things and food scraps that we offer to our animal and feathered friends. Ravens do a fly-by every morning to scope it out.

 

[MossRoad]

We have an old c-band satellite dish that is upside down in the woods behind the house. This is our alter of dead things and food scraps that we offer to our animal and feathered friends. Ravens do a fly-by every morning to scope it out.

Nice! That kind of thing would start some rumors down here in Indiana. :laughing:

 

[Doofy]

Nice! That kind of thing would start some rumors down here in Indiana. :laughing:

Mother Nature does a wonderful job of cleanup. We have a osprey nest a couple miles behind the house and we see them carrying fish back to their nest all summer long to feed their babies. We have walked around under the best looking for fish bones and there are none. Evidently, small rodents eat those bones for the calcium. The area is perfectly clean and there is no smell. Fox, coyote, wolves and bear take care of any large creatures that may die.

 

[MossRoad]

Mother Nature does a wonderful job of cleanup. We have a osprey nest a couple miles behind the house and we see them carrying fish back to their nest all summer long to feed their babies. We have walked around under the best looking for fish bones and there are none. Evidently, small rodents eat those bones for the calcium. The area is perfectly clean and there is no smell. Fox, coyote, wolves and bear take care of any large creatures that may die.

Makes you wonder if maybe the ospreys are just good housekeepers, or if the animals below are having a feast? I know a lot of birds like wrens and robbins will take the chicks' poop away from the nest and drop them elsewhere. I once installed a motion sensor camera/vcr at our back gate. The first day I saw a robin landing on the gate with food in it's beak, poops on the sidewalk and flies away. Couple minutes later, it comes back in the other direction, lands on the gate with poop in it's beak, drops the poop and poops itself, then flew away. 4 hours of that... the tape was full! :laughing:

 

[Diggin It]

Pepe has been removed from the resting place I assigned and deposited in an open field across the road. Who knows by who. Aside from the various ground predators, there is a sky full of winged predators.

 

[oosik]

That's a nice way to keep the critters food up off the ground Doofy. Do you ever have bears visit? The year I was in Glennallen - there was always talk of black bears at the Copper Center garbage dump. Of course, by now - it's probably a sanitary landfill operation. No more open garbage.

 

[Doofy]

That's a nice way to keep the critters food up off the ground Doofy. Do you ever have bears visit? The year I was in Glennallen - there was always talk of black bears at the Copper Center garbage dump. Of course, by now - it's probably a sanitary landfill operation. No more open garbage.

We see bears every now and then. It's the ones we don't see that are worrisome. We have a low spot about 40 feet behind the house that we decided to clear of brush and trees. While cleaning, we discovered numerous large piles of fresh bear scat from more than one bear. It appeared that they were camped out for several days, just watching the house. We keep a closer eye on the beagle now. We also added surveillance cameras that now keep watch in all directions.

 

[Diggin It]

Apparently the Turkey Buzzards have been busy. Pepe is now more like a newspaper if you remember that old riddle.