Smell Ya Later

I never saw many wild animals until I moved to the big city.

It's true.

Since relocating to the greater L.A. area...

I was nearly trampled by a deer en route to Griffith Observatory. I wandered within yards of a rattlesnake in a Glendale walking park. I slinked under a raccoon dangling a foot over my head in Toluca Lake. I spied numerous flocks of parrots in the Valley. I dodged a jogging coyote in the middle of a Pasadena residential street.

I even saw a rooster in a driveway by my friend David's house.

Yes, a rooster. David explained, "We think someone just dropped him off here."

And now, we live over a skunk.

To explain: Our house has what's called a California basement. It's essentially a tiny cellar that leads into a crawl space. Prior residents had the genius notion of adding a pet door to its entrance. And an enterprising pole cat capitalized on that convenience before we blocked the port off.

We've named this beastie "Smell Ya Later" after The Simpson's Nelson Muntz's exiting catch phrase.

Every night between ten and midnight, Smell Ya Later casually leaves his downstairs apartment and scuddles into the alley in search of sustenance, sex and other acts skunkian in nature. This usually occurs without incident, as Smell Ya Later seems pretty suburbanized.

A few times, however, SYL has lived up to its name.

Our plans?

The next time we see it leave, we're going to barricade the pet door. Let's hope our recon is good. We definitely don't want any operational SNAFU.

If the lock-out doesn't work, then we're going to have local pest/vermin control pay our basement buddy a visit.

In any case, soon it's going to be smell ya later to Smell Ya Later.

******

UPDATE: It's been days since the last SYL sighting/smelling.

Kirsten read that skunks flee location once they happen upon higher predator feces. So, we set a bag of Riley's dirty diapers outside his door.

So far, no more SYL. Strike another victory for science?

Time will tell.

And yes, we removed the diapers.