What Does “A Surfeit of Skunks” Mean?
“Surfeit” means an excessive amount of something, more than enough, sometimes uncomfortably so, and applied to skunks, it carries an obvious wink: given the animal’s famous defensive spray, even a single skunk can feel like plenty, making the idea of a genuine surplus of them a mildly comedic exaggeration rather than a neutral description of quantity.
The humor works precisely because skunk odor is so distinctive and long-lasting that “too many skunks” isn’t really about a specific number at all, it’s a joke about threshold, since most people would consider even one unplanned encounter more than sufficient. Skunks themselves are actually fairly solitary outside of denning season, so genuine large gatherings are relatively uncommon, making “surfeit” less a literal description of group size and more a playful commentary on just how memorable their signature defense really is.
Example: “The homeowner joked about the surfeit of skunks under the porch, though in truth there were only two.”
Related: Collective Nouns for Mammals