Skunk mating season coincides with Valentine’s Day and the drama is nauseating

Romance may smell like rotten eggs around your home on Valentine’s Day, thanks to one of nature’s cruel little jokes.

Turns out Feb. 14 is also about the time striped skunks start mating.

And female skunks don’t mess around when it comes to rejecting unwanted advances, according to a warning posted Wednesday by New Hampshire Fish and Game.

“Male skunks begin stirring and wooing female skunks around the second week of February. Females refusing this courtship will spray in defense,” the agency wrote on Facebook. “Thankfully, skunk mating season only last from mid-February through mid-April!”

Striped skunks can be found across most of the country, according to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, which means millions could experience the smell of skunk romance gone wrong this weekend.

“Foul,” “pungent” and “noxious” are just a few of the words ScienceABC uses to describe the aroma.

“Skunk spray is a thiol, an organic compound with sulfur as a principal component,” Smithsonian.com reports. “Sulfur has that classic rotten egg smell, and it’s what gives thiol its gag-inducing power. ... In the case of skunk spray, the thiol is so potent that it can be smelled a half-mile away.”

Male skunks will get over it, expert say. But humans may not be so lucky.

“Skunk spray is so potent that it can knock you out or even kill you,” National Geographic says. “The powerful stuff has been likened to tear gas because it can cause temporary blindness, coughing, and gagging.”

This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 2:46 PM.