Striped skunks turn up across West Virginia, 146 records spanning 33 counties, with Preston, Monongalia, and Randolph in the lead. Monongahela National Forest and Potomac Wildlife Management Area hold the largest named-site totals, but this is an animal of farm edges, river bottoms, and backyard cover more than of high forest.
An insect hunter with a famous defense
Grubs, beetles, crickets, and the larvae of ground-nesting wasps anchor the skunk’s diet, dug out of turf and leaf litter with strong foreclaws and leaving behind neat, cone-shaped holes in lawns and pastures. Eggs, berries, small rodents, and carrion fill in the rest. The spray everyone knows is a last resort; a threatened skunk stamps, hisses, and raises its tail first, and it can hit a target roughly ten feet away when the warnings fail.
Two seasons on the move
West Virginia’s counts crest in February and again in June and July. The late-winter rise is breeding season, when males that spent cold spells denned up begin ranging widely at night. Skunks do not truly hibernate, but they sleep through the worst weather, sometimes sharing a den. By early summer the year’s kits, born in May, are out and trailing their mother on her rounds, which can turn a single sighting into a line of four or five skunks.
Status in West Virginia
NatureServe ranks the striped skunk S5, Secure, in West Virginia, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
