DONNIE JOHNSTON: Polecat Moon

The skunks are out and about.

Feb 18, 2026

By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST

Two skunks resting in a hollow log — Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

It is the Moon of the Polecat.

Yep, it is mating time, and the skunks are out and about. I passed three live ones the other night on my way home and another, freshly slain, was lying dead in the middle of the road.

Of course, I slowed down and inhaled deeply to help open my sinuses. It may seem strange to some, but I don’t find skunk odor disagreeable. In fact, I find it rather invigorating and very medicinal. As I said, the pungent smell of a polecat will open up your sinuses quicker than Vicks VapoRub.

In fact, my grandmother used to make skunk grease which could be administered to the chest of child with croup. Just boil down the skunk fat and pour in the liquid from the scent gland and let it congeal. Lasts for years.

Slowing down allowed some of the fresh odor to rise up and adhere to the underside of my car. It was a very refreshing ride the rest of the way home.

I became familiar with the skunk smell when I was a schoolboy trapper. I could get $2 for the skin of a mostly black skunk and $1.50 for one with more white fur. That was more than I could get for a gray fox at the time.

Now there was no way I could skin a skunk without getting the odor on me, so I just resigned myself to the fact that at times I would smell like a polecat. To me, it was the smell of money.

Catering to the wishes of family members, I tried to keep the odor down as much as possible. So, when I caught a skunk, I hung him up on a tree limb to allow him to air out for a week or so before skinning.

Mostly, that worked, but one winter, similar to the one we are experiencing, it got frigid for two weeks and my most recent skunk froze as hard as a rock, which meant he was unskinable.

I figured that sooner or later he would thaw out, but then my grandmother informed me that the fur buyer had called to let me know he would be making his final trip of the winter through my area in three days. What was I to do? The cold spell was several days from breaking, but I needed the money this skunk would fetch.

Always one to improvise in the face of a crisis, I took my frozen skunk, wrapped him in a burlap feed bag and stuffed him behind the wood box of the kitchen stove. Then I was off to school. When I came home, I had a thawed-out skunk that I immediately skinned.

My grandmother, who didn’t have much of a sense of smell, never knew the difference, although she did mention that she thought the neighbors must be burning some strange wood in their stove.

“Must be greasewood,” I replied as I walked out of the kitchen with my guano bag under my arm.

There was this other time when I was fox trapping and caught a skunk in a dirt-hole set. I dispatched him (there is no safe way to turn a skunk loose that is caught in a trap), tied him to my back car bumper and headed on to town to run errands.

Well, I cleaned out the crowd at the bank (one of the vice presidents had to go home and change white shirts after I gave him an “old buddy” slap on the back) and I spoiled some appetites at the drugstore lunch counter.

Just a poor country boy trying to make an honest dollar.

Anyhow, watch out. The skunks are moving. We are now in what my Indian ancestors called, “The Moon of the Polecat.”

This winter is shaping up much like the winter of 1976-77. It got cold and stayed cold that year, too, and we had snow with ice on top. The good news? That year it started getting warm about the middle of February and we had an early spring.

Let’s hope.

Speaking of which, there have been some years when I got my potatoes in the garden by February 20. I don’t think that’s going to happen this time around.

What is going to happen is that some industrial strength potholes are going to open up when a complete thaw arrives. The freezing and moisture have caused every crack in the asphalt to expand, and a few realignment jobs may be in order soon, not to mention damaged shocks and tires. Get ready.

This winter has been terrible for golf courses, which have all but been shutdown since Christmas. I have played once since December 20.

For others, the cold and snow and ice have been a godsend. Woodchucks (sellers of wood to wealthy people who will pay anything) have sold every stick they can find. A buddy in Rappahannock, who usually has two or three mountains of firewood, sold out to woodchucks before the groundhog (pardon the pun) saw his shadow.

And if you had a truck or a tractor with a blade, you worked long hours, but you made big bucks.

Okay. We’ve had our winter. Let’s get on with spring!