Ok, there are few things as adorable and funny as baby skunks.
They practice being scary: tails straight up, aiming their tiny pink bum, and stomping.
Stomping is a defense behaviour where skunks slap their two front paws down to scare away anything that seems threatening. The furball babies do it with a little jump! Adorable and hilarious! Could be in a Disney movie.
The trick to handling a skunk is to tuck its tail under their body so he/she can’t spray.
Of course, the trick to that is getting close enough to the skunk (without getting sprayed) to tuck the tail, ha! With the babies it is not difficult, but I would not recommend trying with an adult. Especially not an adult protecting her babies.
A skunk can spray its musk more than 10 feet with extreme accuracy. But it would rather not, since it takes skunks weeks to replenish that last-resort defense mechanism. Ideally what they perceive as a threat is scared off by the stomping and growling that babies practice.
Most skunk litters are around 5-7 kits in May, so the babies we are seeing now are approximately 2-4 weeks old.
