In this winter of discontent, skunks are surviving in Chilltown
How and why they're probably here to stay
By the Chilltown Blues
This winter, on one of the most frigid nights so far, we’ve seen something walking around Chilltown at night. We thought it was a cat, at first — one of the ones we root for to make it through an extremely cold night or, in the summer, find a peaceful spot in an incredibly loud and hot night.
But even on an empty sidewalk, cats walk around a bit more tepidly than what we were witnessing: it was, in fact, a skunk.
If we didn’t know any better, we might have even said the skunk jauntily crossing a street looked as carefree and purposeful as someone jogging in similar temps.
Skunk sightings are not unheard of in the north Jersey/NYC-area. But nothing in a surface-level knowledge of skunks — one of a handful of animals considered swamp- or river-rats — suggests they’d manage to survive well in a crowded area during a cold winter.
Skunks prefer open spaces, so of all the places for them to be, a densely packed city is not ideal. New York City, for all its density, has much more open parkland for skunks to get a foothold than Chilltown.
So wanting to know how exactly they can fare here, in near-Arctic temperatures, we did our research and discovered how much they fit with what’s already happening.
