Mystery of the Holes in the Ground

I've started noticing these weird holes in our yard, and have wondered what might be doing this.

I asked the girls and at first thought they were the culprits. The sometimes like to dig up moss for their frog habitats. But there were just too many, so I knew it had to be something else. But what would do this?

We kept wondering and finally decided to set one of our traps. This morning when we woke up, the mystery had been solved.

We had considered the possibility it was a skunk, but I guess we didn't think we would actually catch one. So now what do you do?

Well, Kevin walked out slowly behind a blanket. His first attempt to throw the blanket on top failed. The blanket just fell to the ground!

So he had to get even closer and carefully place the blanket on top - the skunk was backing up and watching him the whole time. Kevin carefully opened the cage and finally the skunk turned around and went out.

We watched him run away - saw two places he got in and out of our yard - and then went down into a hole (likely his home) just on the other side of the fence in the swamp. Yeah - feet away from my garden - where the girls like to catch tadpoles.

Lovely. We have a striped neighbor.

And if I thought the holes in my yard were bad, this is the what he did while caged.