Aging Grandmother is a genius...The Sister not far behind!

In case you may not know it, we have had an unwelcome guest at our house for the last several days: a little skunk has taken up residence in our crawl space with the ground hog who apparently has lived there for a while. He, however, made no smell so no incentive was sought to get rid of him. Not so, Skunkie.

So, whom should i call to get any old wives' tales of success for such things? That's right. Good old mother. She has always come up with harmless and successful ideas for all kinds of stuff. For example, who was it that taught me how to get rid of the gamey flavor of our free-range chickens (also squirrels, deer and buffalo-ugh, I won't care to try-and anything else nasty I guess. Also works on turnips)? Yup: Momma. And who was it that gave me the lovely recipe for small children's diarrheas-safe, yet successful? Yup again..and said children have never forgiven her even though I think it tastes like cinnamon rolls not yet cooked.

So, a call was put in to Momma. For those who may not know Mother, she is 96 and as active an old bird as I could ever hope to be at half her age. She was off gallivanting and I had to wait for her to get back but, sure enough, she had a solution. And that is where The Sister came in: they decided that we should put mothballs all inside the place and then put coyote urine deterent on the outside. They also decided, The Sister's advice, to have us borrow a dog to keep the skunks away. We haven't done that yet.

So anyway, The Dad got the mothballs and gingerly opened the door to the crawl space and tossed them everywhere. However, no varmit was there at the time so he hurried up and blocked up the hole they came in (now why didn't he do it much earlier? Cause he didn't feel the need, I guess).

Now, how do you get rid of mothball smell, Mother Dear? Sure beats skunk!