Skunk-snakes are odd and deceptively dangerous creatures that resemble a legless skunk stretched to ten or more feet in length. They are slow moving and often quite plump, denning in an underground lair appropriated from some other animal, usually one the skunk-snake overpowered and ate.

While they are capable of strong constriction, their chief method of attack is by ambush with their musk spray. Unlike a true skunk, their spray is not a scent-based defense, but is a nearly odorless, clinging fluid that contains a powerful weakening agent to which they themselves are immune. It can be sprayed more than twenty feet and if sufficient skin contact occurs incapacitation is almost instant. The victim is awake and can feel everything that happens, and perhaps move slightly, but is simply too weak to resist.

Skunk-snakes will attack solitary humans, or rarely a small group if all can be sprayed at once. Once prey – be it wildlife up to the size of a small bear or a human – is sufficiently weakened by their spray to be unable to resist the skunk-snake will slither out of concealment and work its broad, snakey jaws over its meal. A skunk-snake's lengthy stomach can easily accommodate an entire adult human – one large specimen in rural Pennsylvania was captured because it had swallowed a family of four, plus their dog, at a picnic outing and was too gorged to slither away before it was discovered.

Once their meal or meals is consumed the creature will slither back to its den, where it can take a week or more to digest its prey. Skunk-snake dens have been found to contain regurgitated clothing, money, cell phones and other indigestibles.

The recommended procedure for determining if a skunk-snake is active in an area is find an area where a track or trail can be overlooked from a distance, then send a solitary jogger or hiker – favored prey of the creatures – along the trail to bait it out. Swift response is necessary if an attack takes place since a large skunk-snake can swallow a human in only a few minutes, or may drag it back to its lair for ingestion.

Fortunately, skunk-snakes are territorial and cannibalistic, which keeps their numbers at a manageable level. They sometimes appear in areas where none were previously encountered, and recent research has determined that very rarely a skunk-snake may be born to a normal skunk mother, and after devouring its siblings, parents, and any other skunks in the den makes its way off to an independent existence.