# Wild animals in the house
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [May 20, 2008, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939 "2008-05-20T04:46:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/1 "2008-05-20T04:46:10Z")
In the past 3 days, I’ve had a lizard and a skunk wander into my living room. I corralled the lizard and tossed him out. I gently yelled “Out! Out! Out!” to the skunk and it left on it’s own accord. I’ve had two feral cats wander in. I’ve had rats and mice too.
What animals have wandered into your house?
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### Author:  [@erleichda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erleichda)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/2 "2008-05-20T05:07:51Z")
where in tarnation do you live?
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### Author:  [@bat312](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bat312)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/3 "2008-05-20T05:27:22Z")
Not in my current home but previously had three raccoons in the kitchen. I wash the dishes more frequently now.
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### Author:  [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/4 "2008-05-20T05:31:24Z")
[QUOTE=erleichda]
where in tarnation do you live?
[/QUOTE]
Umm, Santa Barbara?
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### Author:  [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/5 "2008-05-20T05:32:19Z")
Do you not close your doors and windows? Seriously, where are these animals coming in?
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### Author:  [@brujaja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brujaja)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/6 "2008-05-20T05:39:52Z")
I live in Oakland. One morning, when I lived in a house not far away from where I am now, I walked out of my bedroom towards the coffee and saw a wolf sitting on our living room couch.
My roommate was watering the garden out front. I walked out the open door and said, “There’s a wolf on the couch.” He said, “I know, it just sort of wandered in.”
Long story short, it was someone’s pet wolf (he was a park ranger & had a license) which had been stolen almost A YEAR before. The whole family came over to pick her up, after I called the name on the tags. The guy, his wife, and two adorable little blonde girls. They had a portrait they’d had taken at Sears of the little girls dressed as Pocahontas, with the wolf, long nose and all. Hee, hee! Too much. Everybody cried, & the guy slipped me a fifty as they went out the door.
The irony? My son’s name, Wolfgang, means “guardian of the wolves.” But he wasn’t home.
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### Author:  [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/7 "2008-05-20T05:59:21Z")
[QUOTE=Renee]
Do you not close your doors and windows? Seriously, where are these animals coming in?
[/QUOTE]
I leave the doors wide open. I think I’ve also had an opossum in the attic.
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### Author:  [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/8 "2008-05-20T07:24:42Z")
That’s fucked up, dude. Animals wandering through your house?!
I accidentally trapped a raccoon in my garage the other night. I closed the door, so as to keep the raccoons out, then head a banging noise a few mins later. I went to see what it was and literally scared the piss out of the little guy who was checking out my lawnmower. My dog was excited to smell the garage the next morning, following the raccoon’s trail up and down the shelves, over by the dog food, to the pee next to the lawnmower and out the door. It was neat to watch.
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### Author:  [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/9 "2008-05-20T07:45:04Z")
[QUOTE=Darryl Lict]
I leave the doors wide open.
[/QUOTE]
Well, there’s your problem. Get yourself some screen doors, man.
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### Author:  [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/10 "2008-05-20T08:01:49Z")
[QUOTE=Renee]
Well, there’s your problem. Get yourself some screen doors, man.
[/QUOTE]
Screen doors are an excellent idea., I wasn’t saying that there wasn’t a reasonable solution to the problem. I actually like the idea of wild animals wandering through the house. On the property, outside of the house, there are neighbor’s dogs and a whole family of raccoons living in the palm tree.
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### Author:  [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/11 "2008-05-20T18:30:27Z")
There was [my recent story](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=466299) about The Horror In The Basement…
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### Author:  [@Labelless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labelless)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/12 "2008-05-20T18:42:09Z")
In the past year we’ve had a squirrel, a bat, and a few voles. We used to have raccoons, but we found out they were breaking in under a piece of loose siding and had chewed or gouged the wall under that. It’s fixed now, so we’re not sure how the others got in.
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### Author:  [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/13 "2008-05-20T19:16:52Z")
A bat, over which I went embarrassingly girly, and a gila monster (I think) that hid under the couch the day we set up the Christmas tree. Didn’t realize it was a gila monster until after my brother had picked it up, taken it outside and released it.
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### Author:  [@MovingTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovingTarget)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2008, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/14 "2008-05-20T19:26:19Z")
I was about to suggest screen doors too, but hey, if you like the wild wanderers in your house, more power to you. As far as animals in my house, I’ve had several birds, an opossum, and a snake in the garage. Nothing too exciting. But when my grandparents were alive, we found a deer inside their screened in porch one time. And they lived in the middle of town. hehe…that one was fun.
MT
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### Author:  [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2008, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/15 "2008-05-21T04:58:42Z")
A wolf on the couch? Holy crap. We’ve just had mice and two rats. SHUDDER. In the summer, we usually have a moth or three. Wolf spiders. A white peahen. Okay, the peahen didn’t come inside, but it hung around in the driveway and occasionally flew up and sat on the roof. Raccoons in the driveway. Note: do not leave dog food samples that your neighbour gives you in the driveway next to the front door. I meant to bring them inside, but… there was a raccoon party just outside our bedroom door that night.
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### Author:  [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2008, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/16 "2008-05-21T13:55:15Z")
Today when I got into the office, everyone was abuzz. A young raccoon had gotten in somehow. One group had been collecting food for a local food pantry. There’s now flour over a wide area. Animal Control came and caught it and removed it. The officer said she was going to take it to a wooded area and release it.
StG
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### Author:  [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2008, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/17 "2008-05-21T14:24:12Z")
What a timely thread.
Yesterday my husband had the day off. He noticed some large flies had gotten into the house during our trips in and out of the house while gardening. These were the flies that bump wildly at windows trying to get out, instead of the annoying kind that seem content to just buzz circles around your head. So to be obliging, he opened the kitchen window and screen, to let them find their way out, then left the room for a few minutes.
This particular inside windowsill has several spice jars perched on it. Or had, rather - he heard a quick succession of noises sounding like things falling, and ran into the kitchen. There was a blue jay just inside the window, knocking over the jars while (probably) attempting to figure out if they were food. It looked at him, and when he made a quick movement towards the bird, it fortunately flew out the open window rather than into the house. The screen was closed after that.
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### Author:  [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2008, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/18 "2008-05-21T15:05:06Z")
In a previous home, we had a fishpond outside, where ducks would settle in with their babies in the springtime. My young daughter would stand on our back deck and toss bits of bread down to them. The door onto the deck was a French door with a handle rather than a knob. One day, when my wife and I were at the neighbor’s house and my daughter was in the living room, two ducks grew tired of waiting and flew up onto the deck to demand bread. They pecked at the door, then started to fly against the door.
You guessed it. One eventually landed on the handle of the French door and the door opened. My daughter, who had been mildly freaked out over the ducks assaulting the back door, was suddenly faced with two big mallards _in the living room with her_.
To this day (she’s married with her own kid now) she’s nervous and wary around ducks.
More critter-in-the-house stories to come.
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### Author:  [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2008, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/19 "2008-05-21T20:02:13Z")
A bird, Carolina Wren I think. It was in the Christmas wreath on the front door and when I opened it to get the paper one morning, it flew in and dove into the Christmas tree. I didn’t want to be late for work so I just left it and figured my wife and kid would find it. Heh, they did.
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### Author:  [@Ol\_Gaffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ol_Gaffer)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2008, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wild-animals-in-the-house/449939/20 "2008-05-21T20:26:49Z")
An [_Elgaria multicarinata_](http://www.sdnhm.org/fieldguide/herps/elga-mul.html) (Southern Alligator Lizard) this morning before I left for work. It was beautiful - probably 18 inches long including his tail. We get them a lot in the house but it is pretty rare to get one that size that has never lost its tail. The only problem is that they aren’t particularly scared of humans and can bite like hell so you have to be quick to catch them.
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