No Skunks in Arlington Isn't Good News for Humans

Tim McDowell, a trapper with Emmitsburg, Md.-based Animal Bat & Bird Extractors, insisted he had had a skunk removal call for Arlington recently. "Oh no," he said, checking his book. "That's Herndon."

In two years of cataloguing for the survey, Zell has found the largest Virginia Pine in the country and 15 rare plants, most growing near the Potomac River. And that's the point of the survey: to find what's left to better protect it.

But he has also found that many plants and animals that records show once lived in Arlington have disappeared -- big game such as wolves, bobcats and weasels that are the first to leave as an area urbanizes, as well as amphibians such as salamanders and tree frogs, and more than 200 species of plants.

Zell, 57, grew up in Arlington, playing in woods and wetlands in an area now pounded with traffic on Interstate 66. In his lifetime, he has seen Arlington be transformed from a rural farming area to one of the most urban counties in the nation. For the survey, he has found only one colony of the once-prolific American toad, a depressed dragonfly population, one place where riverbank goldenrod grows and one place where the queen snake still lives.

But these dead or dying species are all specialists, he said. Queen snakes feed only on molting crawfish. And crawfish populations have fallen because they can survive only in clean water. A skunk is a generalist. It will eat anything that comes its way, he said. It can live under porches and garages. It should be here.

Zell has mapped all the green spaces in the county, the largest of which is Arlington National Cemetery. What shows up looks like the disjointed pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. "Nothing is connected," he said. "The natural open space that's left is all isolated. Like little islands." Maybe that's why there might be no more skunks, he said. The islands are small. And it's dangerous to move between them.

After more than an hour of fruitless searching, ducking golf course sprinklers, Zell again stopped the Bad Boy. Hodnett's thermal imager had spotted a life form in the distance. He began to suck on the back of his hand, making the high-pitched squealing noise that an animal in distress, such as a rabbit, would make if it were in the jaws of a predator. The call usually brings out other predators eager to join the feast.

The life form slunk close enough for Hodnett to capture it clearly in the spotlight. A mangy red fox froze. Then it trotted off.

By the end of the long night, Zell and Hodnett had found a flying squirrel, a deer, a cat, a mouse in a tree and a moth.

Hodnett dismounted stiffly from his sniper chair. He has seen barn owls, northern harrier hawks and other species disappear from the larger and more rural Fairfax. But he is unwilling to give up on an Arlington skunk. "We'll find a skunk for Greg yet," he said.

Zell isn't so sure. And, although the skunk is not too popular among people, he worries about what its disappearance might mean for the intricate web of plants, insects and animals needed to sustain life. "If people don't care that one thing disappears, how are they going to care that a whole lot of things are disappearing?" Zell asked. "Everything has gotten so out of balance."

He pursed his lips and stared silently into the darkness.