There's always been the occasional raccoon or skunk wandering into the neighborhood from the woodland a few blocks away, but over the last couple of weeks the street's been stink city, with skunkfumes striking hard and often. Today we discovered why.
The neighbors tracked the smell to the enclosed space under their new deck, where they found two adult skunks and a bunch of little chirping skunk babies. And suffered the predictable results.
So. Manual removal is, uh, tricky, and the neighbor's house is already pretty much uninhabitable, they headed out to stay somewhere else. No biggie, though, just call Animal Control to take care of it, right?
Ha ha ha! Animal Control is not servicing non-emergency situations, and skunks don't qualify unless we suspect they're diseased, which they said no to because they have healthy babies.
Why is Animal Control only working barebones emergencies? Because Travis County government services are currently defunded, thanks to the Governor and Legislature's feuding with Sheriff Hernandez over Trump's immigration detainer nonsense. See the politics thread for more information.
And that's how Rick Perry stinkbombed my neighborhood and evicted my immigrant neighbors.