Last year I was walking my beagles in the park when we came across one male and 3 female turkeys. My beagles wanted to talk to them up close and personal. As I pulled them away I spotted 2 coyotes craning their necks to see around a bush about 50 yards away. The turkeys are gone.
This is in a parkway running through Dearborn. Mi.
Today At Nashville International
I was driving past the cement plant when I saw something & stopped. A White Tail. It was a doe. I was 24 feet away, close enough to watch her swalllow what she was eating.
I figured she would run if she heard a voice, so I rolled doown the windows & said Hi.
She merely flicked an ear at me, & kept watching/munching.
I drove on to work, & 10 minutes later, I began my daily morning walk for exercise (I arrive early for this reason).
I saw her again, this time from 15 yards away. They certainly can be graceful. She gamboled away, flashing her white tail.
CarnivorousPlant:
Had I responded to this message before today’s walk, I would have said yes.
Today I saw a (presumably) mother deer and fawn jump across the road about 10 feet in front of me. THAT is even more beautiful than two seemingly same-size deer seen grazing from afar.
Also saw a light brown, roly-poly low-to-the-ground animal which I’m guessing was a gopher, ground hog or woodchuck. I didn’t get a good enough look at it to tell for sure, unless the color itself is a clue.
I went out front for a smoke break at work the other night and saw something moving around the corner of the building. A moment later a fox trotted out into the parking lot, and stopped and stared at me. Very cool, I knew there were foxes around but you usually only catch glimpses of them. He strolled on across the lot, stopping every now and then to size me up, then disappeared into the woods to the north of the building.
We have a skunk that likes to hang out in front, too, but I haven’t seen him for a while. You have to watch out for him, he comes right up to the door and snuffles around, and no one wants to come barging out the door and surprise him. There’s also a large gang of bunnies that resides on the south side of the property, they come out and play when it gets dark. And lots and lots of deer all over the place. And possums.
Considering my workplace is inside city limits, we see quite a bit of wildlife out there.
My daughter and I went to a horse ranch camp a few weeks ago and there were lots of farmyard critters. The most fun, though, was a little weasel that had taken up residence in some squirrel holes. We must have watched it pop in and out of various holes and wrestle around with random bits of vegetation for about half an hour. It was really playful and hyper–like an otter and didn’t seem to mind us much at all except as objects of curiousity.
I was sitting in a lawn chair in my little container garden a few days ago, reading a book. I was pretty absorbed in the book, and had been still for a long time.
A juvenile rabbit casually sauntered towards me, paused beneath my chair, then sauntered a little farther into the lawn and began munching clover.
He was completely nonplussed even when I moved to look at him. Either I have a fairy-tale-princess ability to befriend wild animals, or he was too young to know any better. Well… he ate all of my poppies, too, so he might have been trippin’.
There are also two chipmunks who live around the patio, and who run squeaking either into the shrubbery (their home) or a nearby tree every time I go outside. If I sit down and get comfortable, and one of them is up the tree, then a couple minutes later that one will make a mad dash for the bush, usually running right past me to get there.
I always wondered; so that’s where “Pop goes the weasel” comes from! 
A couple of years ago, when taking a pre-dawn walk through our neighborhood, we saw a couple of foxes chasing each other at the rural edge of the subdivision.
Around and around they whirled, in and out of the pool of light cast by the one streetlight, up into the grass of a large lawn, back down onto the deserted street to do a big figure eight. They were eerily silent, but their little paws made a delicate whappity-whappity sound on the pavement as they crossed over it. They weren’t very big, so I’m guessing they were two half-grown pups out of the same litter. Beautiful little things, they were.
The ground dove left the nest in the grape arbor about a week ago, and two large babies were in it. Yesterday they left the nest. They both can fly, but they have been walking around in the garden plants for the last two days. We have a lot of different bees species in large quantity this year. The butterflies are down to a normal number now.
The White Tailed Deer population is denser due to development in the last few years.
I’ve seen a fawn with two does while driving. The does eventually sauntered off into the woods; the fawn remained staring at the car for a couple of minutes, realized he was alone and bolted after Mom and Auntie.
During a power outage and ice storm, I went walking near the same spot; two does turned and look at me from 300 feet away. Everything was sheeted in ice and very bright; they turned away after staring directly at me for a few moments.
A saw three doe running through yards in the neighborhood. They leapt over six foot chain link fencing in perfect co ordination as you or I would step over cracks in the sidewalk.
I remembered another encounter. I was out back of my office building, having a smoke. We have a small rain overflow pond that had a small amount of water in it. I saw a slithering through the water, then up the bank. All of a sudden, a big hawk swooped in, and snatched the snake from the grass. He flew off, with the snake hanging from one claw.
Spectacular!
I was visiting a client out on the Palos Verdes Peninsula (suburban LA, but very hilly with canyons, and still semi-wild in some areas). We were standing in his back yard when his wife called to us from a window and warned us that a small skunk was coming around the house toward us.
The animal strolled around the house as we stood still, then he spotted us, about ten feet away from him, and stopped. Uh-oh, he thought. He faced us and hissed and slapped his paws on the grass in our direction. We backed off about five more feet. That’s better, he thought, and continued his search for dinner in the nearby bushes.
I later learned that a skunk does not use his vile-smelling scent except as a last resort. His gland only contains about a spoonful of scent, and when he has used it he is pretty much defenseless, as it takes his system a few days to regenerate a fresh supply. So instead he will snarl and hiss and slap the ground and even stand on his front paws to point his butt at an enemy in an attempt to bluff his way out of having to use his chemical weapons.
We were hiking Mount Robson in Canada (ah, the Canadian Rockies–incredible) and we saw lots of marmots. I’d never seen one before, and I really thought they were cute, although I gather most people think of them as pests. My husband and I hiked up the Robson Glacier Trail (not my photo) to a beautiful alpine meadow. We wandered along for a bit and came across this marmot–which promptly walked up to me and stretched out on its hind legs and leaned on my legs with his front paws. I was not expecting that and I jerked a bit. Another hiker walked by and said that if I stood still the marmot would lick the salt off my legs. So I did, and it did. I have a picture of it, but not digital–me standing with my pack on, while this marmot that came up to my thighs is licking my legs. It was awesome.
I had a run in with another pest–a possum, in New Zealand–I think the Kiwis go out of their way to run the things over. We were backpacking the Inland Pack Trail and stayed the night at this awesome natural amphitheater with incredible acoustics, with just a possum for company. Quite frankly, he scared me because he was pretty aggressive. I left my pack outside the tent, open and empty so the possum wouldn’t chew on it to explore inside (because I figured he would be looking for food), and when we woke up in the morning, there were little dusty possum prints all over it.
My most recent critter show was the wild turkeys outside my husband’s cousin’s house–the males were trying to attract the females, and damn, they’re showy! I thought peacocks were awesome, but I’d never seen a turkey spread its feathers like that. And their wattles get bigger and darker. It was really cool.
Yeah, they are cute. Some advice: one thing everybody who camps in the western mountains learns, is NEVER to leave anything edible in your tent when you leave. If you do, when you return, you’ll probably find a marmot-sized hole chewed in your tent, and the inside stuff a shambles. That includes anything a marmot considers edible, such as food, candy, toothpaste, shaving cream, etc.
For the same reason, if you leave a backpack while you hike around, be sure to unzip all the pockets and leave the flaps open, or the same problem will occur.
:eek: Recently, I was “buzzed” by a hawk. I was coming into the office from outside, and as I walked along the path, I heard a “ripping of air” above my head. I looked to my left, and saw the hawk sailing along in ground effect. It then made a hard left turn into the woodline between the parking garage and the building. Scared the willies out of me, but it was amazing.
Other animal encounters include the fox that ran about 5 feet to my right while I was sitting in a stand hunting, a flock of turkeys that came in to my stand, and a HUGE deer (10 points or so) less than 10 yards from me while hunting moose.
Both the turkeys and the HUGE deer lived, as I was not carrying a bow at the time. It was not firearm season for either animal.
While hunting, I’ve also had chipmunks crawl up on my foot before they realize that I’m not a log, but rather a large moving creature!
The first summer that I owned my recumbent bicycle, I would go riding every morning that I didn’t have to go to work; so about 4am or so, I would leave the house and ride 20 or 30 miles just to kill time until the laundromat opened at 6.
One morning, a nighthawk began pacing me. It flew about 5 feet over my head, and either about 10 feet in front of me, or about 10 feet to my left. If it was to the left (in the opposing traffic lane), it would veer out of the way of oncoming cars, but return as soon as they were gone. This went on for at least half a mile (about 5 minutes), when it evidently met up with its mate, and the two of them swooped off across a field together.
I don’t know quite what interested it in me, unless it was my strobing helmet light; but nighthawks are one of my favorite birds, and it was unbelievably cool to ride with one for a while.
Last week I was walking down the street near the river and I heard something moving in the grass. I turned around and saw a long thin brown thing with a pointed face. It was quite a surprise, as I never have seen a weasel before and certainly had not been expecting to see one. I didn’t even know they were found in this state, much less in a city.
I’ve seen coyotes several times here–the ones down by the river are pretty fearless and often hunt in broad daylight. Recently I’ve also seen snowy egrets fishing near the river and huge swarms of cliffs swallows catching mosquitoes in the bosque.
A few years back, lovely summer day, driving around with windows open on my ole Firebird (only important to know because it’s so low to the ground.)
I stopped by the curb on a quiet suburban street (can’t remember why, to fiddle with the tape player or something). I see something BIG fall out of the sky through the passenger side window.
I look over, and it’s the biggest, most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen. Standing on the grass, calmly staring at me. We’re eye to eye - meaning this bird must have been over two feet tall.
We just stared at each other for at least 30 seconds, though it seemed much longer. Then it just took off - one big whoosh and it was gone.
Turns out it was a Golden eagle. One of the most spectacular moments of my life.
We have about 50 acres of land that we have planted with Alfalfa and Timothy hay, we usually get two cuttings a season out of it, we also have a small 1-acre pond on our property, spring fed, and stocked with Largemouth Bass (small ones, about 6-8" long, good fun on ultralight tackle)
the land is posted no-hunting, no-tresspassing, we have a family of deer living on our land, about 5 of them, a buck, a doe and a couple young deer, we also have a ring-necked pheasant that stays on the property
the deer are utterly fearless, last night, i was out fishing at the pond, and one of the young does was watching me fish, she was standing about a hundred yards or so from me, just watching me, she’d get bored, walk away, go merrily bouncing around the field, come back and watch me, totally fearless
my 5 year old nephew came over to fish with me, followed by their dwarf Dachsund, Quincy, and the deer just stood there, watching, she made no move to flee
once Quincy saw the deer, he went nuts, barking like crazy and running towards the deer…
the deer had this haughty expression on, and actually looked at Quincy rather alloofly, she seemed to have this look of <Bronx accent> “So, you think you’re a tough guy, eh, whaddaya gonna’ do to me, i out-mass you easily by a factor of 10 or more, go away, you annoy me, you ain’t gonna’ hurt me, faghettaboutit”</Bronx>… and she’d go back to merrily bouncing through the field…
for wild animals, this deer family is remarkably tame, we’ve had does come right up to the edge of the pond while people are swimming in it…