Mad Skunks

[Silver Creek Slim]

I'm reading The Buffalo Hunters; The Story of the Hide Men by Mari Sandoz. It tells about what she calls "the year of the mad skunks". It was 1872..  I have included the text below.

It was the year of the mad skunks. In addition to the Indians and in summer the tarantulas, rattlesnakes and an occasional copperhead in the south, there were the skunks to watch too now, skunks that came out boldly in daylight. The men might be attacked as they crept up on a herd or pegged out the hides, while they sat around the big supper frying pan sopping their sore-finger bread into the gravy or while asleep, even up in the wagons. Usually the skunks were harmless, even sociable creatures, moving in under corn cribs or under houses in the settlements. They were always hanging around the buffalo camps like stray dogs, eating the beetles around the hide piles, showing up for the supper bones, perhaps a mother marching in out of the dusk with a row of the striped little kittens following, hoping not to be driven away with thrown firebrands or a splash of hot grease.
     But now suddenly the neat black and white, plume-tailed animals were ragged and drooling as they came charging in, snapping at everything, the small teeth sharp and deadly. Colonel Dodge, on a scout up the Arkansas near the old Santa Fe crossing, was awakened by a commotion in the servant's tent next to his. When the noise died down the pungent smell of skunk crept through the camp. Evidently someone had disturbed a garbage raider. In the morning one of the men had his hand bandaged. A skunk had come into the tent and grabbed his hand, he said. The ball of the thumb was torn and lacerated where the prowler had hung on until he was clubbed to death and then pried loose.
     There was no caustic except fire in camp, and after so many hours Dodge decided that such extreme measures would probably be more disturbing mentally to the man than physically efficacious. Instead, the colonel hid his concern and had the wound treated like an ordinary injury: washed thoroughly with castile soap, the mangled flesh cut off and the wound packed in water dressing. Soon it was healed but Dodge was still uneasy. Often these bites healed very readily and then were followed by hydrophobia months later. This case, however, turned out to be the only non-fatal skunk bite that Dodge heard about in all the Arkansas River region while he was there, although in Texas and up north along the Platte he had known of many men bitten without a serious consequence.
     A few weeks after the soldier had his thumb lacerated a trader was bitten near Ft. Dodge. The man got his revenge by emptying his pistol into the miserable little skunk before he had the wound cauterized. He got the best care possible but he died of hydrophobia anyway. And those who carried madstones did no better, not even with the rare, egg-shaped stones said to come from the stomach of a white deer or white cow. It was said that the stone clung like a leech to the wound for hours if the bite was infected, and when removed, would turn milk a bilious green. With milk seldom available, warm water generally had to do, although one hunter killed a dozen wet buffalo cows to milk their bags, as Indians did for newborn babies who lost their mothers. But even with this buffalo milk to cleanse the madstone the man died. Hair balls from the stomachs of buffaloes were sought out in long-dead carcasses, and also proved useless. The believers in the madstones insisted that they failed because they had not come from white buffaloes, probably true, for the albino was a rare and sacred animal to the Indian, and sought out.
     There were sixteen fatal cases of hydrophobia in the region and of the eleven up around Ft. Hays that came under the observation of the post surgeon, all but one were fatal. For a while there was a sort of panic among the hunters and freighters. A hunter with a little knowledge of Latin camped out on a sandbar of the Arkansas, surrounded by water. In the night his cheek was torn. He tried to cauterize the wound, using a still pool as a mirror to direct the hot iron, and then rode as hard as he could for Ft. Dodge, but he died too, after his cheek had healed with no scar that his beard wouldn't cover.
     All this time parties of men went out to kill the skunks, scouring the prairie around the towns and posts, the brush patches and the breaks, but the country was so large and wild and the bitten dogs had to be destroyed too. Indians trading at Ft. Dodge told of times when mad wolves came right into the lodges, wolves from whose bite no one ever recovered. Old hunters tried spreading poison, dubiously, saying they would probably kill mostly wolves and coyotes, the summer hides worthless. And dogs too. Finally the skunks disappeared, a dead one found here and there, perhaps no more than skin and bones, some of them right up around buildings or in the buffalo camps.

Has anyone heard of this before?

Slim

[Four-Eyed Buck]

Sounds like an out break of rabies, Slim..........Buck

[Silver Creek Slim]

Sounds like an out break of rabies, Slim..........Buck

That's why nocturnal(sp?) animals that come out in the daytime 'round my place die of lead poison.

Slim

[Delmonico]

That out break is based on fact but be very cautious of Mari Sandoz, she sometimes don't let the facts interfer with her story.  I'll grab my copy and note some to you.  But she is a good writer, try "Old Jules" perhaps her best, it is about her father a notable "Character" in Nebraska history.

[Silver Creek Slim]

That out break is based on fact but be very cautious of Mari Sandoz, she sometimes don't let the facts interfer with her story.  I'll grab my copy and note some to you.  But she is a good writer, try "Old Jules" perhaps her best, it is about her father a notable "Character" in Nebraska history.

Thanks, I was curious how factual the book was.

Slim

[Col. Riddles]

You can just about bet the ranch that any skunk you see out roaming around during the day is rabid. One deer season I shot 3 during daylight hours.

[Four-Eyed Buck]

I've had to do in a raccoon out in daylight and actin' REAL strange.......Buck

[tarheel mac]

And let me tell you man, you don't want those rabies shots...I got bit by a young raccoon once up the mountains of NC while up ther annoying the trout and had to take the whole series...It ain't no fun, I can tell you that...(although it has gotten a bit more painless these days I have been told...)

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

In the past three weeks I've had two skunks and one armadillo get into the yard with my two Jack Russell Terrorists, who tag-teamed all three to buzzard bait condition.  "Diller wasn't too bad, but gettin' those dogs where I could stand to be around 'em after their skunk bouts took some doin'.  During the same period, I've trapped two 'coons coming to the cat feeder in my garage.  Don't think we have a rabies problem, but get a bit concerned about how fearless all these critters seem to be gettin'.

[tarheel mac]

Cap...after my experience, I would say with regards to raccoons and especially skunks, its a shoot first, ask questions later...I have been told that skunks are the number 1 carrier of the disease...and I  would worry about game laws later...your choice of course, but I'm telling you, them "fix you up" shots hurt!

[Four-Eyed Buck]

We've had quite a bit of problems in N.E. Ohio with rabid raccoons, haven't heard much about the skunks although the end of last week we had to close some windows one night as something tangled with one behind us somewhere and the smell was rather intense for awhile. More than likely a feral cat as we have a bunch of those around here. I wouldn't worry about those 'coons unless there doing it in broad daylight. Foragng is their natural make up and of course an easy meal is not to be passed up. I've had them raiding bird feeders and even under my carport going after the container for birdfood, which they couldn't get into. Drove the dogs crazy though. All this was at night though. They still have an aversion to seeing one of us watching them though, if they notice us they split.................Buck

[Delmonico]

One of my Game Warden friends told me one time when rabies was kinda high to shoot any skunk I saw in the day time.  That is now my policy.

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

Cap...after my experience, I would say with regards to raccoons and especially skunks, its a shoot first, ask questions later...I have been told that skunks are the number 1 carrier of the disease...and I  would worry about game laws later...your choice of course, but I'm telling you, them "fix you up" shots hurt!

Both species are unprotected in Texas.   If the large number of road kills you see around here is any indication, they definitely don't need protection.  Back when folks were a bit less affluent, and furs brought a little bit of $$, the populations were pretty much kept in check by trappers.  Not so any more.  Have the same problem with possums and ringtails, and  coyotes.