SnapesGrayUnderpants

I live in California. Rattlesnakes are native to every county in California. I have only seen 2 in the wild. After watching a TV show about people who do snake relocations in South Africa and kinds the snakes they deal with, I have a much better appreciation for rattlesnakes. They are non-aggressive, they don't climb trees or bushes. If they should get into your house, you won't find them on a shelf behind folded clothes poised to spit venom into your eyes like the spitting cobra in the tv show. They often rattle if you get too close so you know they are there. They only bite humans in defense. I'm not afraid of snakes but the spitting cobra, tree cobra and black mamba in the tv show totally freaked me out and I had to stop watching.

We have a neighborhood skunk that walks through the backyard and causes the bedroom and our clothes, 3 floors up with windows closed, to become smelly. One evening I had the dog a leash in the front yard and walked around the corner of the house not knowing the skunk was there. The dog lunged, the skunk sprayed but fortunately only a small amount of spray hit the dog. However, the rooms, especially on that side of the house smelled for weeks. I had a library book in the second floor bedroom (that's 1st floor for you Europeans). The bedroom is on the opposite side of the house from where the skunk sprayed and the windows were closed. When I dropped the book off at the library, it smelled so strongly, they almost threw it out and considered charging me for it. I was accustomed to the skunk smell so I didn't realize how much the book smelled. After letting it air for a few days, the smell subsided so I wasn't charged. Don't know why our skunk smells so much when just passing by. In my experience, skunks don't smell much unless they spray or get squashed by a car. There is a wonderful book called Winter Dance published about 20 years ago (can't recall the author's name) about an amateur dog sledder in Minnesota who decides to train for the Iditerod race. The training often happened at night because he wanted to simulate race conditions. Skunks are nocturnal. He describes how the dogs would always chase any skunk on the trail. Numerous times he'd have to wade into a snarling pack of dogs to rescue a skunk by picking it up by the tail and flinging it clear of the dogs. Naturally, he'd get a face full of spray in the process. For the next half hour, he'd stumble around half blind from stinging eyes and would vomit every so often. When sufficiently recovered, he and the dogs would continue on their way - until the dogs encountered another skunk. It got so his wife began measuring the training sessions as one, two, or three skunkers as in, "Oh, so it was only a one skunker this evening?" Then she'd make him sleep in the kennel with the dogs.