The striped skunk is a fixture of southern Michigan. Most of its 966 records fall in the Lower Peninsula’s southern tier, Washtenaw, Ingham, Oakland, and Macomb counties lead, where cropland, woodlots, suburbs, and wetland edges tangle together, though the map reaches north to Chippewa and Houghton in the Upper Peninsula.
A night-shift insect hunter
A skunk does most of its work after dark, shuffling field edges and lawns and digging up beetle grubs, grasshoppers, and ground-nesting bees, along with mice, eggs, and fallen fruit. The little cone-shaped holes it leaves in turf are often the first sign of one in a neighborhood. Places like the Kellogg Biological Station’s old fields, Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge’s edges, and Waterloo State Recreation Area’s mixed ground all fit that foraging style. When threatened, it stamps a warning before turning and spraying, a defense effective enough that few predators press the point.
Sleeping out the cold
Skunks are not true hibernators, but in Michigan’s cold months they den up, sometimes several females together in a burrow, and sleep through weeks of hard weather on stored fat. The record follows suit, thinning to near nothing in December and January, then building to its strongest stretch from June through August as the year’s young leave the den and start foraging with their mother.
Status in Michigan
NatureServe ranks the striped skunk S5, Secure, in Michigan, and the species is native throughout the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
