I don’t know about you, but I feel the skunks are trying to tell us something – get ready for winter and hunker down perhaps? I don’t know about that, but maybe it has to do with the old run around.  If you run around in the street long enough, you’ll get hit by car. Not even the squirrels have issued such a dire warning – yet.

Lately, there have been so many skunks dead in the road as I drive from home to work and back. It seems I find the odious remains in every town I pass through. Worse, I think one has taken up residence near the office.

I have called a city official who said the city doesn’t have an animal control department, so they could refer me to a state approved firm to handle the smelly culprit. This is interesting, since they will spend money on brick crosswalks, but will not help wildlife (or residents) in the area like coyotes, foxes, deer and skunks.

Whether you are of a certain political party or not, the issues we face at all times is the taxes we pay to our city and other taxing bodies and the debate that we are getting our money’s worth.

So it got me thinking:  how much money does this city save? Should Waukegan (a few miles north and a lower income bracket per household) who seems to be plagued with a city government’s lack of code enforcement dump their animal control services? How much money do they carve out of the budget for this? How will that help the city’s expenditures? There would be fewer employees, less pension and health insurance expenses to start.  Perhaps then, we too could have brick walkways in town. The now former city employees can start their own pest control business. See? Win-win.

A taxpaying citizen can call the city hall and be told – go get your own pest control company to handle it.

Huh.

Now the taxpayer (who should be paying less now, right?) is out money that could have been spent on food or medicine (you know, real stuff, not fluff stuff) to rid their property of stinky vermin. Ingenious!

At first with all these skunks out and about foraging for the winter, I wondered if too, this was their mating season. No, that would be February through March as I discovered on the almighty internet.

As it is with skunks or city services, you have to admit – a lot of it stinks!