Here in the woods we get those guys regularly and our dog hardly even bothers to bark anymore. This guy got our full attention, though. He came back several times for a few weeks this spring and then moved along.
[hijack]You shouldn’t be putting bones (or any other meat products or byproducts) on your compost pile.[/hijack]
Dang. I’d want more than an eighth of an inch of glass between me and that paw!
It’s Spring here at the moment, and we noticed a nest being built in a tree a couple of metres from our verandah (which is three stories high). We didn’t see any birds tending it so we were curious as to what was building the nest.
One night my mum was sitting out on the verandah when she saw something moving. Now, we’d seen a new tiny brown possum wandering around our trees lately, and she said this thing she saw moving was a miniature version.
Turns out that it was a possum nest. The baby possum had fallen out of the nest and managed to grab onto a tiny branch a little way down from the nest. Mum said it hung there for a few minutes, and would keep trying to reach up to the nest, but would fall down again. It kept opening its mouth like it was crying, apparently.
Eventually the mother looked over the edge of the nest and saw the baby. She hung down from her tail, grabbed the baby with her paws, and it scrambled onto her back.
So, that’s my Spring Nature Story ™. I wish I had been there to see it. Occasionally I see the mother around, and sometimes when I look at the nest I see a little tail hanging down. But I really wish I could have seen the rescue.
I was not aware of that - I wonder if the critters have been swiping them all along.
The raccoon was wandering around again tonight - it’s got a limp/severe lean to starboard. I didn’t see any fresh wounds but then again I was about ten feet away. Maybe that’s why it’s coming so close to the house. I had some millet biscuits the conure loathed so I threw them in the compost pile.
It seems to hang out mostly by the compost pile or the surrounding area but wanders up along side the house near the trash cans. Judging by the limp, I don’t think it can climb up the cans but I did bungee cord them shut just in case more raccoons show up.
mmm… beer…
I get excited whenever I see beer too…
I get excited when I see deer, too. I was an adult before I saw a deer in the wild. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona.
No doubt.
He looks like a baby, too, so Mom could have been near!
I still get excited when I see deer. Since I grew up in an area where I never got to see anything but domesticated pets (and an occassional raccoon), it’s a treat for me to see the wild things.
Living in Colorado and being within about an hour’s drive of Rocky Mountain National Park, I have gotten to see:
Deer
Elk
Moose
Big Horn Sheep
Coyotes
Wild turkeys
Marmots
Prairie Dogs (So damn funny and entertaining!)
I hope I never get tired of seeing the wildlife and enjoying it’s beauty. I promise not to call anyone about it…although I might be guilty of emailing a picture or two once in awhile 
I saw a coyote near my apartment complex a few months ago. Didn’t expect that, as I live in a long-civilized area of Houston. There is a wooded area that backs up to a bayou so we do get critters like rabbits and possums, but I was really surprised by the coyote. I think he was headed to the apartments next to mine to scavenge the dumpsters.
I’m a dork and I get excited about all kinds of animals. I won’t usually call people to tell them about the bunny I saw though.
Keeping the cans shut is a really good idea, plus eliminating anything else it might be attracted to. Besides the fact that raccoons can get aggressive when they lose their fear of people, they are a huge rabies vector. That’s one animal I don’t really want hanging around - I’d almost take the bear instead :eek: .
I still love seeing (most) wild animals. I learned a long time ago to shut up about it though. When I was a kid, I remember doing the “Look Dad, a deer!” thing when I was at my grandmother’s house and she promptly ran to the closet and got out her shotgun. She figured any wildlife on her property needed killin’ before it ate any of her crops. Fortunately that one got away …
This summer a mama deer left her fawn in our front yard on several occasions. While I personally didn’t consider it a safe place – it’s completely open and there are loose dogs around – she apparently thought it was OK and we were honored that she trusted us.
We’ll be seeing more deer too – it’s hunting season now and they’ll hang around by us because they know the hunters won’t come that close to the houses.
My wife’s family is all deer-happy. My mother-in-law’s favorite night time activity is to get into the druck, drive up in to the mountains and look for deer. (They live in rural West Virginia).
We were traveling there once and I had fallen asleep and my wife woke me up, just so that I could see a deer. I think I stopped getting excited about deer when iwas about 10.
The worst part is that she’s honored my ban on venison in the house until just this past weekend when she brought up a bunch of it. She plans to cook it when I’m not home. She better have a good plan for getting that stench out of my house before I come home!
If there’s a stench, then she’s cooking it wrong or somebody field-dressed it wrong. Properly prepared venison will smell pretty much the same as beef when it’s cooking.
I met a guy from New Jersey once who described them as rats with antlers. Not a lot of love, I sensed.
When I lived in South Dakota, deer were about as common as house cats. As were wild turkey, pheasants, and coyotes—in town. It wasn’t long ago that I read a newpaper account of a mountain lion being spotted not more than two blocks from where I used to live. That’s a little more wild life than I would want wandering the neighborhood.
I had a friend who had a pet doe named “Angel”; they rescued her after her mother was hit by a car outside of their house. I loved that deer. She was so cute with her orange coat and the little orange bow in her tail every year. She was just like a dog, I swear. She had a huge fenced yard and she’d sniff at you and lick your face/hands/whatever got close enough. She even responded if you called her.
But.
I hit a monster of a doe not that long ago, and now I need a new headlight. Oh, it still works just fine, but the crack combined with the fact that it now points more up than down kind of makes it hard to see at night. So no driving the ol’ minivan after dark. :mad: It doesn’t help that I have dents in my hood, too. Bastards. And they pick at my gardens every year, and then they DIE and my dogs drag their nasty bodies into my yard so when I go outside to get the mail or whatever, I’m greeted by lovely wildlife skeletons! Yippee!
Deer are beautiful but, like a previous poster said, they need to stay away from my field, my gardens, and my bumper.
Oh. I was kind of hoping for the O. Henry-ish twist when you discover you’d run over your friend’s beloved pet who’d been “stepping out” on them or something.
Okay, let’s face it, the real problem is the fact that she is really really loud on the phone so when I pick it up and she screams, "LOOK OUT YOUR WINDOW!’ several times it is annoying.
The UPS man? HE BRINGS STUFF! Sometimes it is my amazon.com order. Duh!
Or it might be a Mini Cooper, my favorite car. Or an Audi TT–geez I miss the guy who drove that car!
I also have several squirrel stories which I call “The Squirrel Chronicles” but I’m planning to post them on my web log.
Now, here is a story. My former boss’ wife was going on an early morning run. (Kittenblue–this is THE BISHOP I’m talking about!) In the middle of their road was a buck and a deer doing what comes naturally. My boss said his wife startled the pair and that it was “Buckus Interruptus.” Well, you’d have to know him to get this story, but it was very very funny, hearing about it afterwards. I think it was actually scary at the time because she had to kind of stare him down.