Couple more questions…what do they have for wildlife up there? The biggest native animal on Okinawa is a mongoose…we don’t even have squirrels. No deer. I’m looking forward to interesting fauna.
Also, heating systems. It seems there are three kinds–forced air (which is the only kind I’m familiar with), radiator (steam?), and baseboard heaters (which are kind of ugly, I think, but seem to be the thing in newer houses). Can someone give me a quick primer on those?
We have deer, moose, bear, coyotes, otter, fishercats, bobcats, a few lynx, and maybe some mountain lions. Don’t let your cats run free, the fishers and coyotes will certainly get them.
Don’t forget mosquitos!
Don’t forget skunks!
I have spent about an hour and a half driving in this morning. In addition to snow and rain, we have them mixed as well. This may make you rethink the whole New England Experience.
It is definitely a messy day out there. I’m (currently) fortunate to on be a few miles from work, so I didn’t have much problem. Next year, same time, we’ll be in a new facility in Burlington, MA, which means at least a 30-40m drive every day.
I had to laugh driving to work today - there were a couple of cars that had slid off the road and each was surrounded by at least two pickup trucks that had stopped to help! I love it here. Well, except for the hour and 45 minutes it took me to get in to work today…
Don’t forget the squirrels (in both red & gray) the OP asked about, along with other rodents such as chipmunks, moles, voles, & mice. Birds aplenty from ducks, geese, swans (rare, usually domesticated?), songbirds, turkeys, hawks, and owls.
The official state bird. You get very used to carrying cans of repellent in your car/outdoor gear during the 4 warm months.
You might as well plan on getting a pickup yourself, if you weren’t already. You’ll fit in better with the other New Hampsters, too.
What the hell, New Hampshire? It’s almost mid-December. There’s no WAY you can’t have been expecting snow to come eventually! Yet every road I took in today was unplowed, except for the freeway, which looked like someone might have casually drifted over it a few hours ago. Good thing I was driving our new 4wd. That’s fairly essential, OP. A very good snow car.
Also we get a lot of deer in our yard, and I’ve seen a few raccoons. And voles in the yard, but they’re just irritating little bastards.
Skeeters I can deal with, as they respond to bug dope. Black flies don’t, and they are the bane of my early summer months hiking.
I’m not a homeowner, but I think it’s more about what fuel you’re using to heat that determines the cost. I have #2 oil, but you could have propane, wood, pellets. Someone more knowledgeable than I can explain the interchangeability; some furnaces take more than one kind of fuel but tanks are different…
Had to look up fisher cats–they don’t look very nice. the lynx are beautiful, though. What kind of bears ya got? Moose will be new for me–very exciting.
We’re looking at getting a 4wd truck (we’ll need one, we do a lot of construction work), and a Subaru Impreza (all wheel drive). So it looks like we’re set there.
Sorry you guys are having crappy weather today. It’s sunny and 70 degrees here, I’ll enjoy it while I can.
Many people are not aware that moose can be VERY dangerous. Do not approach a moose!! They are not retiring like deer - if they feel threatened they will respond aggressively.
Steam heat - I don’t know that much about it, although I have it in my current apartment. Radiators pretty much always hiss – some people find it annoying – to me its a cozy sound (heat’s coming up!). It’s a little less dry that other forms of heat – and you can just put a pan of water on the radiator if you need more humidity. Big con is that it takes a while to get up to heat.
Baseboard - had it in Virginia, hated it, wouldn’t dream of it in a wintery state! (I’ve lived in Michigan, where we always had forced air). The things I hated were: 1. Costs a fortune to run. 2. Often installed in the most inefficient location possible (a cold exterior wall). 3. Excessively dictates furniture placement (if you want your cozy chair to be cozy… better place it next to the baseboard heater). 4. Usually comes with cheapass thermostats that aren’t very accurate; requires constant fiddling adjustment.
The one benefit it that it is usually very easy to only heat the rooms you want to heat. So you can turn off the heat in the kitchen when it gets warm from cooking, without turning off the heat elsewhere. Or turn the heat down to the minimum in the rest of your house at night, and keep it warm in your bedroom.
I’m still steamed about today, and not just because I spent 3.5 hours out shoveling the driveway. (9" of heavy wet snow + driveway 1/8th of a mile long + dryer delivery expected tomorrow around the back of the house = so very much time) but because the project I was supposed to start at work today was posponed until tomorrow…but no one told me because the HR person flaked on leaving a message, so I drove to work in this lovely weather only to be sent right back home :mad: Driving today was no picnic, and I’d rather of stayed home! If I hadn’t wasted an hour and a half on the super slow drive, the driveway might have been done before twilight…
Renee, we have black bears. Some of them are brown, but they’re black bears too. Here’s a link for you: NH Fish and Game Species List. I’ve had the list bookmarked since the night I thought I hallucinated when I saw an ermine sitting in on our road. Turns out that they’re natives, and way smaller than they look in nature specials. I didn’t expect them to be chipmunk sized.
Essentially no one sees lynx, they are extremely rare and secretive. I’ve never seen any and I spend a lot of time in the woods. If you end up living in a rural area you may encounter a fisher in the evening. We have black bears, the same as everywhere east of the Mississippi. They are generally reclusive but they can get used to people and be problems in rural areas especially if you leave trash cans out or have a bird feeder.
It will really depend on where you live as to whether animals are an issue.
So they’re essentially missing?
This was just across the river on 91 in VT, but last night we were first on the scene of someone who went off the road. She wasn’t hurt but her car wasn’t going anywhere (it ran fine but was stuck). At least five people stopped to see if she/we needed help and one guy said “Do you have enough clothes? I have an extra coat in the car”. It was so sweet and one of the key reasons I love it here.
My friend Arthur, who lives up north, sent me a note recently about tracking and eventually spotting one of these elusive creatures.
I treasure my Art lynx letter.
Something else. Don’t be shocked or offended when cashiers call you deah (dear). I grew up in a miserable little town in upstate New York. The first time I got deared by a cashier was while I was attending college in New Hampshire. I thought to myself “Do I know this person? Does she think I’m somebody else?” No, she was just being friendly. I thought I’d slipped into an alternate dimension. In my hometown, the cashiers sometimes yelled at me for daring to enter their stores. To be fair, there was a big teenage shoplifting problem in that town, but it’s not like I was the perp.
In Maine and New Hampshire, I still get deared regularly, sweetied on occasion, and just last week I was honeyed by a girl half my age. And I’m never going back to my hometown.
I got one of those too, and keep it with my letter from Peppermint Patti. Sometimes I think, which do I prefer, Patti’s or lynx?
Speaking of which, the only one I’ve seen was bloated which caused him to stumble into an eletric fence. He ended up as fried sausage lynx.