There are many homemade remedies to discourage a skunk from making a den underneath your home, porch, or shed. One of the older remedies include mothballs. Mothballs have a very strong odor that can be difficult to breathe around if they are put out fresh.
After being exposed to air, it doesn’t take long for that strong-smelling mothball to lose its potency. Rain or snow can also weaken the potency of the mothballs and create a weak repellent in just one or two days. In the end, applying mothballs will most likely be a waste of your time.
In the past, mothballs have been placed around areas that skunks may be hanging around or creating a home. Homeowners place the mothballs around the entrance of their den in hopes of discouraging them to come back. Do they work? The skunk may have left because the smell was too much to endure at first but it isn’t set in stone to be a recommended way of repelling skunks.
If after a few days the skunk is still going in and out of the den, you can proclaim that using mothballs was not a very good idea after all. You may also want to consider that using mothballs can require a bit of planning when you are applying them to a certain area. You don’t want to use your hands to place them as the mothball can irritate the skin.
You must also consider the health of other animals that may visit your yard, including domestic pets such as cats and dogs. If one of them should get a hold of the mothball, it could be extremely dangerous and immediate action would need to be taken. If any amount of the mothball should get into the food or water of your pets, it could poison them.
Because skunks are rather smart, they may notice the mothballs and find another route to get into the den to avoid the mothballs all together. Or they may find another place to call home somewhere else on your property where they won’t be too far away from the food and water that they are enjoying close by.
There are alternatives to using mothballs that is safer for you and your pets. While mothballs may seem like a solution, it will only be short term. Using mothballs on a skunk is not going to be productive as a long-term solution.
There are many other solutions that you can try in order to keep skunks from coming back to their den. You can use sounds, such as a radio station focused on talking, you can put up a light close by so that it shines into the den, or you can simply spray citrus or another type of spray that is safe for the environment but discourages the skunk so they don’t want to stay. These are natural ways to ensure that a skunk stays away and all are more long-term solutions that will work and are safer to use than mothballs.
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