Try your alderperson or other city official.
Also, have you talked to other neighbors who share your concern?

tj

Small cage with bait (dog food will do)...then a trip to the humane society or another location to re-locate once you have trapped the animal.

We have to do this to keep the raccoon population down.

Sorry about your dogs...hope they will be OK.

Here is a link that might be useful: Animal Control Trap

I suggest that you buy a trap yourself. I assume that animal control will dispatch the ferals and skunks if you deliver them to their door.

Hello,
animal control lent us a trap for three days- we also bought a trap ourselves. This past week- both traps- can't catch a skunk. They are walking right past them. Yesterday morning, 5 skunks were seen leaving the area of my yard- I'ce checked the foundation and they aren't living here but are living close by- and using our yard. We saw one last night. They pay no attention to our traps. Tried: eggs, wet cat food, anchovies.

While live trapping of wildlife is seldom prohibited many states require licensing to transport that wildlife. In Michigan people caught transporting wildlife without a license are subject to 90 days in jail and $1,000 in fines.
Discharging a firearm in many places is also prohibited.

As we move into more and more areas and limit areas that wildlife has to live in they will occupy the same spaces we do so we need to learn to live with them. Feral cats are a different problem and require action by your local unit of government.
To understand what you local animal control people have to deal with look at 1. how many there are to serve how much area and population, and 2 what resources they have to work with. We have 5 animal control officers, that work staggered shifts, to cover about 1,700 square miles and a population of about 170,000. It keeps them busy and that also means they cannot spend a lot of time with any one problem.

I live in OK in the first town ever built in this state. We are a small town. I am fully aware that I occupy the same spaces and some animals- but that does not give the animals warrant to live under my house, peruse my yard for grubs and spray my dogs in the process. I am sorry but when skunks cause injury or harm to my property (nesting in crawl space, spraying my dogs, carrying rabies) they need to be dealt with. There is no co-existing peacefully with these skunks, and they have got to go. Since, as you pointed out, animal control has limited resources- and I am dealing with this myself, do you have any suggestions as to catching them? My baits not working. As far as local laws, and resources- animal control has told me to trap the cats and dump them in the country-

I can't believe your animal control said that - how do they think the cats ended up there to begin with? You might want to try speaking with the Humane Society, or whatever group you've got there, to see if they can help you with the cats.

I love cats, and have 4 of my own, but I would draw the line at a feral cat population in my yard. Obviously, if the cat food was gone, the skunks would wander away.

I found an Oklahoma animal control company that has links to feral animal rescue organizations - I hope that something here can help you.

One other thought - it might be worth a look at your town ordinances about having things that attract wildlife to your yard. There are a couple people here in NJ that are having fights with their towns because their cat/bird feeding is attracting rats, snakes, skunks, and heaven knows what else. Maybe the ordinances might help get your town involved.

Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ok based animal control with links