Skunk gets into standoff with deputy after crawling into BMW, Florida cops say

A Virginia man experienced the wild side of Florida, when a young skunk hid in his BMW and defied repeated attempts to tug it out.

It happened Wednesday, Jan. 4, outside of North Naples, and a photo shows the skunk’s tail was the only thing visible from under the car. North Naples is about 155 miles south of Tampa.

“The motorist ... was driving on Airport-Pulling Road near Vanderbilt Beach Road when he spotted the tiny skunk in front of him. He stopped in the middle of the road to avoid hitting the skunk,” the Collier County Sheriff’s Office reported.

“It immediately ran up into the engine pan under his BMW.”

And there the little rascal stayed.

The driver eventually pulled into a nearby parking lot and called the sheriff’s office, which referred to it as a case “straight out of ‘Law & Odor: PU’.”

Deputy Paige Long responded and made several attempts to pull the skunk out, including one using snake tongs. Even that didn’t work.

“It was decided the motorist would drive the few blocks ... and park next to some bushes in the hope the baby skunk would make its way out of the vehicle on its own,” the sheriff’s office said.

The fate of the skunk has not been revealed, but Long says she escaped with no hint of skunk scent.

“I think he was more scared than anything else and wasn’t in a position to be spraying,” she said in the release.

This story was originally published January 6, 2023 at 10:21 AM with the headline "Skunk gets into standoff with deputy after crawling into BMW, Florida cops say."