Striped skunks appear in 253 Kentucky records spread across 56 counties, from the Bluegrass around Fayette County to the lakes country of Trigg and Lyon, with Land Between the Lakes holding the single largest cluster.
Famous for one thing, busy at many
The spray gets the attention, and rightly: a striped skunk can send its musk several meters with real accuracy, though it stamps and warns first and saves the shot as a last resort. Night to night it is really a digger, working lawns and leaf litter for beetle grubs, crickets, and other insects, with mice, eggs, and fallen fruit rounding out the menu. The little conical holes that appear overnight in Kentucky turf are often a skunk’s calling card.
Cold months in the den, not asleep
Skunks do not truly hibernate. They den up through hard cold, sometimes several females sharing one burrow, and wake to forage on mild nights. Kentucky’s small February rise fits the breeding season, when males wander widely in search of mates, and the June peak follows as the year’s young begin trailing their mother on her rounds.
Status in Kentucky
NatureServe ranks the striped skunk S5, Secure, in Kentucky, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
