Unwelcome guest

Last night I stayed up a lot later that I really ought to have. I was fiddling with my blog template and working on the "Straight From the Bottle" logo you can now see near the bottom right hand side of my page (yes, I have the artistic ability of a very talented 7 year old). Eventually I realized what time it was and at around two in the morning I wandered downstairs fully intending to go right to bed.

On the very front of my little house is a fully enclose porch. It's not very big, and extremely cluttered. My landlord stores some assorted stuff in there, and so do I. It's basically like a garage that my car will never fit in, even in the unlikely event it's ever all cleaned out. When I first moved here I thought that cleaning it up would be nice... I could sit there during one of the frequent thunderstorms that Windsor gets, sip a frosty beverage and watch the rain. This will never happen. Anyway, one of the things I store in there is the big trash where all the little trashes around the house are emptied into, and then collectively carted to the curb on garbage day.

So, last night, as I was getting into bed, I heard rustling coming from the porch. I figured that a squirrel or possibly a rodent of some description had gotten into the aformentioned trash. So, I got up, stumbled to the door and flicked on the outside light to see just what was so rudely disturbing me.

I could see a black furry tail clearly belonging to the mysterious interloper poking into view above the pile of garbage strewn about the porch. It looked a lot like a rather big squirrel and I contemplated opening the door and shooing it out. Then I thought I saw a little white mixed in with the black (squirrels are black here). Then my guest's head poked up. My visitor was not a squirrel. My visitor was a skunk.

Opening the door somehow no longer seemed like an attractive option. I retreated back to my room and pondered the options for getting rid of a skunk. More importantly, the options for getting rid of it without getting either myself or my house sprayed. My best idea was going downstairs and knocking on the door. Not to startle or scare the skunk, but just to let him know I was there, and possibly suggest he may wish to move on to somewhere else now. I knocked. The skunk ignored me. I knocked a little harder. The skunk looked up with a "What do you want? Can I help you? Can't you see I'm in the middle of something?" look on its face. Clearly this skunk knew that I wasn't about to open the door and that a polite knock was pretty much the most powerful weapon in my arsenal. I retreated back to my room.

Online, mary, who being in the Pacific time zone was still up, had read yesterday's entry, and helpfully suggested that I should not alarm the skunk. Thanks... I further pondered my options and came up blank. Clearly this animal had me outgunned and knew it.

I sat and continued to ponder for a while, but before I came up with any more bright ideas, like maybe a little sign saying "please go away", the skunk decided he'd had enough of pawing though my refuse and quietly wandered off into the night.

I'm still not sure what else I could have done. Clearly I'm going to have to invest in better securing my porch, and possibly a skunk proof garbage container... And maybe even a little sign...