A Montello man is a suspect in the mailing of a skunk to a South Carolina post office, which was closed down for three hours Jan. 28 because employees thought the package might be a bomb.

"The skunk was frozen solid and shipped, but to the wrong mailing address and not labeled correctly. And when you send something frozen down South, it thaws," said Warden Paul Nadolski of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, who is based in Poynette.

Joshua A. Kerl, 21, is a suspect in the mailing, Nadolski said. Kerl was charged in one of the country’s largest poaching cases, involving as many as 600 animals, some of which were protected species.

Kerl declined to comment.

The Wisconsin DNR is handling the case.

Last week, the Oakbrook post office in Summerville, S.C., received the decomposing parcel and police and firefighters set up a 500-foot perimeter around the building. The skunk was meant for Dan Pernell of Pernell’s Taxidermy in New Hope, S.C., who ended up retrieving the animal.

Pernell told The Summerville Journal Scene newspaper that "I’d like to (stuff) the skunk, because it has celebrity status, but there’s no way I could have done it. It smelled so bad," Pernell said.

According to Chief Deputy Mike Babcock of the Columbia County Sheriff’s Department, Kerl found Pernell on taxidermy.net and received a small payment for sending the skunk to be stuffed.

In the poaching case, Kerl began serving 30 days in jail last week, must pay more than $7,700 in fines and had his WDNR hunting and fishing privileges revoked for a six years.

"The crux of the matter is, how did he obtain the skunk in the first place?" Nadolski said. "He’s definitely into the outdoors, and he’s basically had to go cold turkey. (But) the hobby he wants to get into is still wildlife-related. It’s pretty hard to do taxidermy as a hobby when you don’t have a legal source of obtaining (dead animals)."

If Kerl purchased the skunk, he would need a fur-buyers license, Nadolski said, which he is not allowed as part of his sentence. Further, if an animal is illegally killed and transported across state lines, there could be state and federal charges.

Fines for misdemeanor violations are set at a maximum of $100,000 for individuals, and maximum fines for felonies are $250,000, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Web site.

"We know the skunk definitely left the state," Nadolski said.