I had an interesting object lesson last night. Around 8:30 or 9:00, I heard something digging outside. Little bastard has been in the flower bed too. Sure enough, it was a skunk. I turned on the light, hissed at it, told it in a loud voice to 'Go Away!,' but it didn't listen. Oddly, it had no smell at all. It also seemed completely unconcerned that I was just a few feet away. It just continued digging for whatever it was after in the ivy. I could hear it crunching on something, which I assume were a few stray acorns from the big Western Oak which shades my place; acorns missed by the ring-tail cats and raccoons this summer.
So, what do you do? You want the skunk to go away, simply because it's a skunk - because there's a perceived danger of being sprayed, despite there being no smell from 5 or 6 feet away. You can't shoot it, or even startle it, because it's just feet from your front door, and in the walkway to your house. Besides, the skunk isn't hurting anyone, it's just trying to scratch a living out of the ground. Winter's coming. I don't know if skunks hibernate, but I know that I'm not looking forward to winter...

I decided there was nothing to do but accept it, let the skunk do it's thing, and just not worry about it. The skunk dug around outside about another 20 minutes, then moved off. There's a life lesson here, I think.