Skunk - Outdoor Hour Challenge

The girls and I used to do the Outdoor Hour Challenge when they were younger. With this being the last year of homeschooling Olivia, I wanted to do some remaining nature studies that we had not had the opportunity to do yet. This week, we focused on skunks. 

Watch excerpts from a Nature program about skunks: PBS Nature Skunk. This is a 30-second preview to the program. After that we watched "Skunk Spray Chemistry" which we found fascinating. We learned that:

- A skunk spray ingredient has an interesting characteristic. It will ignite and is highly flammable. 

- The spray has a thiol in it which is a sulfur-based compound that is found in garlic and onions. 

- In high concentrations, the compound will cause people to vomit. 

Look at photos from a field trip to Fawn de Rosa where there was a skunk

We talked about the field trip, and being able to see and touch the skunk up close.

Olivia was clearly intrigued by the little skunk.

It was such a great experience to be able to touch a skunk - something we would never have been able to do elsewhere.

September 26, 2015

Read pages 245-247 in the Handbook of Nature Study. 

Some of the interesting facts from this book include:

- A fully grown skunk is about two feet long; and its body is covered with long, shining, rather coarse hair. 

- The tail is very large and bushy.

- The fur is sometimes entirely black, but most often has a white patch on the back of the neck, with two stripes extending down the back and along the sides to the tail. The face also has a white stripe.

- Its front legs and very much shorter than its hind legs, which gives it a very peculiar gait.

- Its forefeet are armed with long, strong claws, with which it digs its burrow.

- Sometimes it makes its home in an abandoned woodchuck's hole or under a barn.

- The skunk is very neat about its own nest.

- It belongs to the same family as the mink and weasel, which also give off a disagreeable odor when angry. 

- The odor from the spray can be smelled for half a mile downwind.

- Because this discharge is so disagreeable to all other creatures, the skunk's intelligence has not become so highly developed as has that of some animals. It has not been obliged to rely upon its cunning to escape its enemies and has therefore never developed either fear or cleverness.

- The skunk's food consists largely of fruits and berries, insects, mice, snakes, frogs, and other small animals. It also destroys the eggs and young of birds that nest upon the ground. 

- When skunks burrow beneath barns, they completely rid the place of mice. 

Look at the New Hampshire PBS NatureWorks information about skunks. This handout had a lot of good information that Olivia cut and paste into her nature journal.

Read Stories 22 (An Independent Family) in The Burgess Animal Book for Children. Some facts that were integrated into the story are:

- Weasels, minks, otters, and badgers are all related to skunks.

- The "scent gun" is never used unless a skunk feels it is in danger.

- Skunks eat beetles, grubs, grasshoppers, crickets, mice, and frogs. 

- Skunks don't go into the winter chamber of their home until after the first snowfall.

- They have between 6-10 babies each year.

- The mother skunk is the only one around when the babies are born. However, the father rejoins them when they start walking. 

- In the southwest United States, there is a hognose skunk.

- When skunks are angry, they will growl and stamp the ground with their front paws.

- Owls don't mind the skunk's scent, so they are are an enemy of the skunk. 

During 10-15 minutes of outdoor time, keep an eye out for signs of mammals - such as animal tracks. Take photos or make a mental note of how they looked. 

In Minnesota, we typically do not see skunks. Every once in a while we smell if a skunk has been hit on the road. However, it is very rare. In the past 26 years that we have lived at our farm, I think I've smelled a skunk under five times - mostly on the county roads near us. Only one of those times did I smell the skunk (or skunks) on our farm and the smell lingered for days. We had no idea where the skunk (or skunks) was living or hiding. 

Olivia with a stuffed skunk/taxidermy at Lake Shetek State Park.

June 9, 2012

Create a page in a nature study book about what was learned about skunks. 

Olivia did a nature study on March 22, 2013. Her nature journal page is here:

Her new nature journal page that was done in February 2022, is here: 

Olivia used the notebooking page (the first image) from Notebooking Fairy. 

Additional resources for this challenge:

Skunk notebook page

Skunk printout with facts and drawing