@fickdichistwarum They are roughly house cat sized or a little smaller, but shorter because of their short legs, and they're thicker and chunkier, they kind of waddle when they walk around. This is the well-known part, but they spray things that bother them with a nasty oily substance that smells like weed mixed with straight burning sulfur and it's BAD, like eye watering burning Stonk. If one gets killed on the road you can smell it for like a quarter mile every direction. If your dog messes with a skunk God help you because he is now host to a long lasting Cloud of Unbearable Stench.

We had one get under our house and freak out when I was a kid and we literally had to camp out at my mamaw's because the house was uninhabitable.

They're nocturnal (hence the folly of walking at night) and generally pretty chill, but if you run into one the recommended course of action is to be like "NOPE" and head back the way you came.

So imagine my internal state when I, last semester, am sitting outside a building on my college campus late at night, next to some trash cans (Folly! Folly!) and I assume the rustling behind me is a stray cat, but then I turn and see THIS:

And

It starts to WALK UP TO ME

Until it is LITERALLY RIGHT AT MY FEET

Like I could reach down and touch it this skunk is sniffing my shoelaces I'm being held hostage in this rocking chair by a furry canister of tear gas

Had it been any other wild animal I would have kicked it like 20 feet and took off running. Except maybe a possum because those don't get rabies. But with a skunk, if you scare it you're in for a bad time.

The reason i didn't get a photo of it coming closer was that I literally didn't want to move. I've never sat that still in my life. The guy sniffs my shoes, seems to suddenly realize that there's a person here, and starts to sloooowly waddle away. It's possible he really didn't realize I was there—they have incredibly bad eyesight.

So yeah, I've been waiting for a prompt to tell that story.

I feel like I have to add to this that skunks are so freaking cute

I was at a wildlife preserve in New Mexico and this skunk with like 10 freaking adorable tiny little babies just waddled in front of our car and we had to stop and wait until they felt like moving out of the road, and for some reason they really wanted to hang out in the middle of the road for a long while

But it was okay because the skunk babies were the cutest little things in the entire universe we could have sat there in the car watching them for ten years

They are!!! They're SO cute

And they're kinda Like That sometimes, just completely fearless because great horned owls are the only predators that will mess with them.

Two other key things about skunks for people who do not live with Skunks:

1. Skunks have amazingly bad eyesight, decent hearing and great senses of smell to make up, but they DO NOT GIVE A SHIT, because they know they can inflict chemical war crimes on anything that bothers them, so they just sort of bumble the fuck into things with the confidence and coordination of drunken fratboys. This general fearlessness leads to them urbanizing really well, and some people keep de-glanded Skunks as pets (Do Not Do This). @headspace-hotel had a pretty prototypical skunk expirience in that they will just wander right up to you without a damn care, and all you can do is WAIT until it ambles off, or it will spray you with Tear Gas Lite (TM) or worse-
2. If you see the skunk and you still have even an arm's length between you and it, FUCKING LEAVE, because Skunks are the #1 way humans and dogs get rabies. It's extremely common in Skunks in the american west and fairly common in skunks in the east. And there's no notable difference in behavior between the skunks normal "Curious bumbing drunk" and the "fearless and will appraoch or fight anything" phase or rabies. Do not touch, do not attempt to pet, get rid of anything it licks or chews on. If you get bit by any skunk, get to a hospital immediately for rabies treatment.

A Skunk is basically one of those Drunk guys you see at sports events covered in body paint, except he's holding some kind of spray cannister that Probably contains tear gas, but might contain anthrax. Let him ramble on his way.