by Carol Martino

After Rehabilitating and Rescuing NJ wildlife for the past 16 years, this is probably the best example of how little we really do know the wild animals around us.
We received a call from a woman who explained that she had a family of skunks living under a man made rock garden, next to her built in pool and could we please help her. We told her we would come and check it out and see what could be done.
We arrived at the home and after inspecting the area she had showed us we decided that the best bet was to get mom in a trap first then go for the babies. We set a trap and arrived back at the house early the next morning to find that mom was indeed in the trap and that there were two babies in the trap with mom and another 11 outside, swarming all over the trap.
We immediately started catching babies 1 and 2 at a time until we had them all but two, which had gone back under the rock formation. We then placed the trap with the mom and all the babies next to the entrance of their den and sitting on top of the rocks we waited for the babies to exit. After about 20 minutes they emerged, we easily caught the remaining two. Did a thorough reinspection of the area to assure there were no more and then packed up mom and babies and left.
After leaving the house we started debating what would be the best thing to do with them. Take them back and place them in a cage until we were sure the babies would be able to follow mom, or release them and possibly end up with 13 babies to care for. We chose to try and release.
We found an ideal location, nicely wooded, non-inhabited, area, with a nice clean stream running through it. We propped open the trap and stood back and watched. We had set the trap at the top of a hill that slopped down and out at about 50 yards to the bottom. The mother made some noises to the babies, stomped her feet several times and then left. The babies all remained in the trap and waited. Mom walked down in a large circle to the bottom of the hill and back up again. When she arrived back in front of the trap she made more noises, stomped some more and then slowly walked away. The babies began to follow, the mom continued to walk away with 12 of the 13 babies in tow.
We looked in the trap and saw number 13 rolling on his back, playing and kicking and biting the trap, oblivious to the fact that his mom and siblings were gone. Mom on the other hand was quite aware that number 13 was not amongst her children and proceeded to return to the trap, coming back up the hill and stopping in front of the trap, with the other 12 all around her.
Angrily, she stomped and squealed loudly, the other baby skunks stood perfectly still and waited. Number 13 jumped up and ran out of the trap and up to mom, she smelled him, nuzzled him and then off she walked again, this time with all her babies. At the bottom of the hill, she turned around and looked back up toward us, obviously doing another head count.
After this we encountered this behavior in every skunk family that we released, never once were we forced to become adoptive moms to babies that the mother was available.