The feline and canine shopkeeps of Mass Street businesses have long attracted customers like flies to honey, but it would appear that downtown now shares an unofficial, more odorous mammalian mascot: a skunk.
The creatures appear to be striped skunks, or Mephitis mephitis. The adults — sometimes with kits toddling in tow — have been reported nosing around, and caught red-handed on security cameras, scampering past Jody’s Market.
Kelly Corcoran, co-owner of Love Garden Sounds, met his first downtown skunk in the alley by the store four or five months ago. While exiting the back door late at night, he spotted the striped critter and temporarily retreated.
That was the first of many run-ins for Corcoran. Over the coming months, he saw the varmint repeatedly scavenging for scraps near the dumpster. Not even alley construction could deter it.
“Still saw the skunk still out there, jamming, looking for stuff, and I just found it charming,” Corcoran said.
It was the night of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre screening at Liberty Hall, and Corcoran was hanging out behind the store with his friend and longtime artist Travis Millard.
“I’m like, ‘Oh, Travis, don’t move too fast, but turn around,’” Corcoran said. “And there was the skunk ambling by.”
Corcoran joked that the skunk was the latest alley attraction, and Millard ran with the idea. The next morning, he arrived at the store, skunk sketch in hand.
The portrait, done in Millard’s classic illustration style, looks appropriately stinky. The featured mephitine is too cool for school, adorned in a leather jacket and greaser sunglasses, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Text around the rendition reads, “See the downtown skunk in the alley behind Love Garden.”
Naturally, Corcoran took the sketch and made stickers, which are now on sale.
“I love the skunk stickers,” said Melanie Gettler, lead henchman at Love Garden and lucky skunk-spotter. “I also love the idea of, like, neighborhood skunks.”
Gettler saw a surfeit of the creatures, kits included, emerge from beneath an alley building to enjoy a water puddle.
Love Garden staff have yet to endure a spraying. In fact, as far as Corcoran knows, no one downtown has been skunked just yet.
“Maybe we should put some emergency cans of tomato juice hanging from our back porch,” he said.
Corcoran later added, “Maybe this is the only summer, because eventually, if it’s gonna spray somebody, people are gonna feel obliged to trap it. That’s how it’s gonna go eventually. And so the summer of the skunk was funny.”
The stinker stickers
The downtown skunk sticker is available for purchase online and in-store at Love Garden for $2.
Fans can find more of Millard’s work on his Instagram and at his website.
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Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at [email protected].
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Jacob Rice / Lawrence Times
Jacob Rice / Lawrence Times
