With green grass likely delayed until April, animals that burned through fat reserves face a hard question now \u2014 can they hold on long enough for spring to arrive?<\/p>\n
As I was doing my evening closing up the workshop, the faintest of odour drifted inside. Some scents surely do hit the trip wire of memories past, but this particular brand of smell always makes me tense up, wondering if there is more yet to come. Skunk!<\/p>\n
Although the snow depth is still well over my knees, this day\u2019s super nice sunshine and plus 15-degree warmth made for a very spring-like day. And coupled with the clear, full-moon night skies of late, all the ingredients were there for a \u201cwakey-wakey\u201d call to those critters who have been in a deep slumber for the last number of weeks.<\/p>\n
Skunks, chipmunks, bears, and raccoons do not hibernate, they go into a dormancy called a torpor (the only local mammals that actually hibernate are groundhogs and jumping mice).\u00a0This torpor leaves them alert enough to sense a spike in temperature, and a brief amble about in the softening snow is irresistible.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, if the winter den site is large enough, several skunks will huddle together for shared warmth. This slight elevation in temperature will allow their fat reserves to be stretched out a bit as their metabolism is not as demanding.<\/p>\n
When a skunk wakes up for a little walk-about, it may be looking for a mate or it may just be looking for a snack. As both are in low abundance right now, the animal may well head back home for another week or two snooze. At least until the melt water seeping into its winter den makes things a tad uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
As we all know, this winter has been much like the winters of the 1970s …\u00a0piles and piles of snow punctuated with a blast of Arctic air now and then. The last few years have seen the snow all but gone by late March, but this year the first sightings of green grass may well be held until early April. Can the hungry skunk hold on that long?<\/p>\n
Last autumn the skunks (and chipmunks, et al) were eating, eating, eating …\u00a0trying to put on a good layer of fat to sustain them through their long winter\u2019s nap. Compared to when Mr. Skunk first bedded down, he has now used up about 50 per cent\u00a0of his body weight. So yeah, a little snack would be appreciated right now. This may be left-over seeds under your bird feeder, or the weed seeds on dead stalks along a road way.<\/p>\n
Also feeling hunger pains right now are the coyotes, foxes, and great horned owls of the area. And wandering skunk, despite its current wee size, would be an easy target against the white background of the snow laden countryside.<\/p>\n
A few red-tailed hawks have returned from their winter vacation, and they too would not hesitate to pick up an easy meal should one wander by.<\/p>\n
The next morning, as I drive to town for my food gathering foray at the nearby supermarket, I see the cause of the aforementioned wafting odour of the evening prior. A skunk has been hit by a car just a few yards up the road from my laneway. Predators do no always wear wings or fur.<\/p>\n
The carcass has already been dragged up the snowbank and is being ravaged by a pair of crows. Food is where you find it. One of the local ravens will no doubt also hit this pop-up diner.<\/p>\n
I now turn my thoughts to the immediate fate of a skunk that I know has set up a winter den within my woodshed.<\/p>\n
Last October it had made quite the burrow into the dirt floor, so much so that I set up a trail camera to see if it was a groundhog, or what, that was doing this construction. The camera provided the proof that the local groundhog was located elsewhere, I had a black-and-white striped tenant residing under the wood rack.<\/p>\n
That is fine, but to access the inside of this shed, the skunk had to slide under the barn-board door, and did so by scraping a shallow ditch to enter and exit with a bit of a squeeze. However, that narrow entrance is now packed shut with about three feet of snow pushed up against the door.<\/p>\n
Should the skunk wake up, how will it get outside? Will it just go back to sleep for a while? Will it die of starvation before the huge wall of snow melts away? These are the thoughts of a man driving along a straight stretch of road, when his thoughts would be better directed to what was on the shopping list that, for some reason, is still hanging on the refrigerator door back home.<\/p>\n
David J. Hawke is a freelance writer and naturalist who lives in rural North Simcoe County. He has been continuously creating weekly nature stories since 1989\u2026 and thinks that there are still many more topics to cover!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With green grass likely delayed until April, animals that burned through fat reserves face a hard question now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,206232,66,323],"class_list":["post-523502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-hibernationdavid-hawkeoutdoors-columnskunks","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}