Thump, thump.

“What was that? Oh, my, gosh. Pheew, you hit a … ”

Nothing disrupts a peaceful drive in the country, and gets kids squirming in the back seat, like running over a skunk.

Jon Gersbach, Milam County extension agent, said skunks are nocturnal, and come out at night looking for food along the highway.

He’s had several pungent encounters with these fluffy mammals.

“I just kind of grazed it. So it didn’t blow up on my truck,” Gersbach said. “My truck smelled like a skunk for about a week.”

But the offensive smell penetrated the upholstery and air conditioning vents. Nothing Gersbach tried could clear the air. So he rolled down the windows, cranked the AC up to high, and put the hammer down.

“I was driving down the road at 70 mph, trying not to gag.”

As county extension agent, Gersbach takes lots of calls about skunks sniffing around sheds and underneath houses. Gersbach said don’t leave out pet food. Skunks are opportunistic and will not pass up a free meal. It’s also a good idea to keep garbage cans tightly sealed. Skunks are omnivores; they eat small mice and other rodents, insects such as grasshoppers, and scorpions. And although they do grub in the yard for dinner, they don’t tear up the lawn like an armadillo.

Skunks especially like to hunker down under old buildings, places where they won’t be disturbed. Like the one that visited the Gersbach family a few years back, they sometimes slink into open garages.

Gersbach said he was walking toward his truck when he glimpsed what looked like a fuzzy, black cat in the garage. It disappeared behind a piece of Sheetrock. Gersbach picked up a broom.

“I was going to tap him, chase him out of there, when I saw that black cat with the white stripe.”

Gersbach went back inside and asked his wife if she was a cat lover. Apparently the answer was no, because he returned to the garage with orders to get the skunk out.

“I gave him about 30 minutes, and very carefully nosed him around. It was a close encounter,” Gersbach said, “I thought it had the trigger back.”

The “trigger” that Gersbach mentioned is the manner in which a skunk raises up on back legs and lifts its tail. Like a rattlesnake’s rattle, this means business.

“If the skunk is forced to spray, it usually humps its back and turns in a U-shaped position so both its head and tail face the enemy,” Edward Willett wrote in his science column. “They’ll aim for the face of the attacker if possible, because their spray causes severe smarting of the eyes … which is strong enough to cause nausea.”

No kidding.

A skunk’s aim is accurate up to 3 feet, and one can leave its mark from about 18 feet away.

Scientists call the chemical that skunks spray musk. It comes from two glands behind the tail that use decomposing proteins. Just before spraying, powerful muscles around the glands contract - look out, here she comes.

Dogs are one of the skunk’s favorite targets. But most animals aren’t generally offended by the aroma. Instead, it affects them like tear gas, or pepper spray, a way of throwing predators off the trail.

Like its owner, the Gersbach’s yellow Lab, Daisy, has had skunk trouble.

“She was out catting around one night. She got skunked,” Gersbach said.

So he slipped on an old pair of overalls and whipped up a home remedy made with tomato sauce. At the end of the bath, they both stunk. And Daisy was now a redhead.

Most folks say home remedies don’t work on skunk victims.

PetSmart in Temple sells special deodorizers for about $10 that may diminish that putrid skunk smell. But employee Schanece Barker recommends a de-skunk service from their groomers for about $45.

Biologists say to completely disparage the skunk isn’t fair. Out in West Texas, graduate students are studying skunks by tranquilizing and then tracking them with radio-transmitted collars.

“We spotlight them at night, catch them in nets,” said Robert Dowler, professor of biology at Angelo State University. “Most people run the other way, we run toward them.”

And yes, his students do get sprayed. He said victims get used to the stink long before their friends do.

The students are trying to learn where skunks fit in the natural world. Dowler said they supply an important role in keeping insects and rodents in check.

Four different kinds of skunks live in Texas, but only two, the striped and the Eastern spotted, are found in this part of Central Texas.

Skunks carry rabies. But they rarely, if ever, bite humans.

The graduate students have discovered something that has raised nose hairs, er eyebrows. They’ve found a couple of skunk families living in mesquite trees.

Wonder if Jon Gersbach has any mesquite growing in his back yard.

If you need to get rid of a skunk in the Temple city limits, call 254-298-5732.