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What does a skunk smell like?

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Grug

Member
We don't have them in Australia and I've always wondered how bad their smell secretion really is?

Is it enough to make the eyes water?

Enough to make you retch?
 
Grug said:
Is it enough to make the eyes water?

Enough to make you retch?
Both, if you're in the vicinity when they spray, or God forbid, actually get blasted yourself.

The residual smell, which is what people more commonly deal with (thanks to domestic dogs that get themselves sprayed), is much more manageable, but still very annoying. Kind of a sharp, ammonia-like, VERY strong-smelling nuisance sort of thing, that resists attempts to make it go away.
 

Boken

Banned
We might not have skunks in Australia, but we have them deadly wombats... Do you know why Steve Irwin only wrestled crocodiles? Yeah, because wombats are too bloody deadly.
 

ToxicAdam

Member
Imagine you could douse a rag into concentrated urine .. then burn it. There's a small bit of "sweetness" in the smell, that in small doses could smell pleasant. But the full-on smell is all-encompassing. It just overpowers your senses.
 
Boken said:
We might not have skunks in Australia, but we have them deadly wombats... Do you know why Steve Irwin only wrestled crocodiles? Yeah, because wombats are too bloody deadly.
There was a wombat in my backyard the other day. I almost had a heart attack. I had to board up the back door to stop it from clawing its way in. It's still out there somewhere, lurking in the bush...
 

cloudwalking

300chf ain't shit to me
buy this:

39212.jpg


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000AU396M/?tag=neogaf0e-20

A Super Powerful 100% Natural Masking Agent To Mask & Cover Human Scent. Do Not Apply To Clothing, Person Or Boots. Very Difficult To Remove.
 

Borci88

Member
Is it worse than sayy.. a cat pissing on the carpet... and then leaving it for a day or two to really soak in, and then rubbing your nose in it while inhaling?
 
Borci88 said:
Is it worse than sayy.. a cat pissing on the carpet... and then leaving it for a day or two to really soak in, and then rubbing your nose in it while inhaling?

I'll get back to you about that in two days.
 

TiVo

Member
Grug said:
We don't have them in Australia and I've always wondered how bad their smell secretion really is?

Is it enough to make the eyes water?

Enough to make you retch?


How close can you get you head between your legs?
 

Bggns

Member
Here, do this. Exercise heavily and dont wear any deodorant for a week. then take a rubber band melt a chunk of it and fan both your underarm stink and burnt rubber into your nose. thats basically what a skunk smells like, except more pungent
 

Mason

Member
This is gonna sound gross and weird, but I actually like the smell of skunks. Not up close, because that's extremely potent. But like a dead skunk you drive by on the road? Yeah, I think it smells good.

To answer the OP's question, kind of like burnt rubber with something else I can't describe thrown in.
 
Mason said:
This is gonna sound gross and weird, but I actually like the smell of skunks. Not up close, because that's extremely potent. But like a dead skunk you drive by on the road? Yeah, I think it smells good.

To answer the OP's question, kind of like burnt rubber with something else I can't describe thrown in.

We have a ton of skunks. The smell isn't bad in itself, but it's like how strong perfume can make you sick, skunk smell is so potent that you smell it when you drive past in your car for a good 100 meters or so. Sometimes longer. I couldn't imagine what getting sprayed by a skunk would be like.

It's like if you sprayed rotten meat with perfume.
 

tak

Member
I've only smelled them from a distance, but they smell very bad even from a good distance. I would think the smell would be hard to withstand if you got sprayed.
 
The skunk itself probably smells musky, like a Ferret. The odour it releases i've heard holds alot in common chemically to decaying flesh, though i've never even been near one myself.
 

MIMIC

Banned
I'd say an overwhelmingly musky scent. Not quite as bitter as unrine. I really don't know what to compare it to since it's such a unique odor. My dog has been sprayed TWICE. That smell takes WEEKS to go away :lol

EDIT: I got it

10 hobos. A skunk smells like 10 hobos.
 
I lived on a state park for 9 years and my dad had to kill a few of them every summer. You think a spray is bad? imagine the result of a skunk that had been shot in the head and lost control of the spray muscles and just lets everything go in one fell swoop. and then you have to go transplant the carcass with a shovel.
 

Shiggie

Member
bune duggy said:
I lived on a state park for 9 years and my dad had to kill a few of them every summer. You think a spray is bad? imagine the result of a skunk that had been shot in the head and lost control of the spray muscles and just lets everything go in one fell swoop. and then you have to go transplant the carcass with a shovel.
Ha!:lol
 

Mallika

Member
It scares me a little that so many people here have had personal experiences with what skunk spray smells like. I've never had the misfortune to experience it myself, but with all the descriptive phrases used here, I can practically smell it already.
 

SteveMeister

Hang out with Steve.
It's pretty disgusting, especially if you're close to where the skunk sprayed. My old house was surrounded by trees and we had several skunks living nearby. When they'd spray, it'd pervade the whole house. The stink that close is nauseating.

Fortunately our new house has no trees nearby, so while there are skunks not far away in the woods, the smell never gets too bad in the house.

We smell skunks nearly every day on our commute. There's always one hit by a car somewhere.
 

Alethea

Member
cloudwalking said:

Oh my gosh. My father-in-law is a hunter, does hunter/outdoor life/boy scout education, etc. and he has bottles of different animal smells. He once spilled some skunk stink on the carpet in a corner of the living room of their house. The smell in their house was just nauseating. When they came to visit us, you could smell it in their damn clothes. I think they ended up tearing out the carpet. The smell faintly lingered in the walls and furniture after that.

And they wonder why I don't like to visit.

I'd describe it as a mix of a lot of things people have mentioned: burning rubber, rotting coffee, musky urine, and vanilla undertones. It's one of the (many) reasons why I despise the scent of vanilla, and I don't understand why so many girl soaps and perfumes have vanilla in them.

I see dead skunks on highways and back roads all the time. A fresh kill means you have to hold your breath and roll down the windows after you pass one.
 

xsarien

daedsiluap
There's a skunky patch on the New York State Thruway between NYC and Albany that, at times, can sometimes overpower even a car's air conditioning.

It's a pretty offensive, musky-type smell. I really can't think of anything quite like it.
 
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