It had warmed up a bit the morning I wrote this column, but cold weather is forecast to return. That, I’m sure, will make ice fishermen happy. And I’m sure that many of them are also grateful that the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission in fall stocked rainbow trout in many lakes.
But although it’s currently above freezing, on one of our really cold recent nights I was woken up by the smell of a skunk — something I don’t usually think about in the winter. Somewhere outside the bedroom window, this little mammal in the weasel family had discharged its musk at something.
Just about everyone knows what a skunk smells like. Its intense scent contains butyl mercaptan, and when it sprays it out of the glands under its tail the smell stays around for a long time. I’ve read descriptions of its musk as smelling like many different things, but they all mention rotten eggs combined with other foul odors. One reference says the musk smells like the tiger house in a zoo…