I live in downtown Tallahassee, approximately 8 blocks north of our Baby Eating Governor.
In the past week, I have spotted an o’possum twice and a raccoon twice each. In my backyard. Drinking out of the birdbath, just feet away from my tottering, wobbly, blind and deaf 15-year-old dog, minding their own business.
There’s also a red hawk pair who have built their nest in a tree above my backyard, and a barred owl who prowls my 'hood. Not quite sure where that one lives, but I’ve seen it around.
I didn’t get to see that for real but I caught the news report that evening. 
I used to live in Sunnyside, the community just north of downtown Calgary, on the other side of the Bow River. While living there I saw quite a few critters that had made their way into town along the river. One morning as I was walking across the Louise Bridge into the downtown core, I noticed an odd looking log on the shore – looked kinda like a beaver. And then it moved – it WAS a beaver! So I stood there and watched it fiddling about for 10-15 minutes before a By-Law officer who was crossing the bridge stopped to check what I was looking at and explained that there are quite a few beavers living along the river, including a family right at Prince’s Island, basically dead centre in the heart of the city. I had no idea, and I’ve lived here most of my life. Since then, knowing what to look for, I’ve seen lots and lots of beavers and their dams all over the place.
Another time, while walking home late at night from the wedding reception of a cousin of mine, I was approaching the Centre Street Bridge, when I came across a stag, part way up the north hill, standing maybe 20 feet away, quietly munching on the grass. It paused to raise its head and have a look at me – it had at least a 10-point rack – then went back to what it was doing. Beautiful creature.
One morning when I got up and was getting my breakfast, I spotted a peregrine falcon sitting on a branch outside of my 3rd floor apartment window, having some breakfast of its own (a sparrow). Although I had seen our local peregrines in the sky downtown before (we have a couple breeding pairs around town), I had never seen one up close. I managed to snap a picture of it before it took off after being pestered by a couple magpies.
On a couple of ocassions, I’ve spotted our local bald eagles wheeling around in the sky near downtown.
We currently live further north, near Nose Hill Park, which is a massive natural park in north central Calgary. I’ve seen any number of deer and a couple coyotes up there over the years.
Twice I have seen foxes west of the downtown core, around the community of Dover. There’s one hill I know of in particular, near the entrance to the Inglewood Golf and Country Club, that has a fox burrow in it and the kits can be seen chasing around there every spring.
Last spring, down by the base of the Glenmore Dam, where I’ve been working the last couple years, we had a great horned owl family set up camp and I saw the two babies a couple times. Right close by, to the north at the Glenmore Athletic Park, there has been an osprey family living at the top of one of the light standards at the baseball diamond for at least five years that I can recall – they return every spring and rebuild the nest from branches found all around the area, then spend the summer zipping back and forth from the reservoir behind the Dam, bringing back fish for the young-uns.
Rabbits, skunks, racoons in the yard (our local paper recently posted a video of a racoon prying open the unpryopenable municipal compost bins). Porcupines, foxes, wild turkeys, coyotes, deer, in the neighbourhood (my bus has had to stop a few times while a small flock of turkeys sauntered across the road). Groundhogs are ubiquitous in the verges of major roads. However, I would class all of these except the deer as normal urban wildlife along with the usual mice, voles, squirrels, etc.
I’ve never seen bear or moose in the city myself, but have read news articles about them wandering about from time to time.
I just saw a couple of deer strolling through the backyard yesterday. I see tracks all the time, but rarely see them in the flesh. A few times, I’ve seen tracks clearly showing that they climbed over my car. Like literally climbed on to the roof, then back down.
But so is “big city” amirite? amirite? 
Point taken. Although when I lived there Anchorage had 250,000 people in it. I lived out by Lake Hood, which meant that any bears that got into my garbage had to come through the entire city to do so. Either that or they swam across from Point Mackenzie.
But yeah, it isn’t like grizzlies were prowling downtown Fort Worth.
I live in northern Lake Highlands just on the other side of 635 from Richland College near Abrams @ Forest as a matter of fact, and I’ve seen armadillos over near Abrams @ Skillman, and a friend of mine who lives more or less near Audelia @ Forest swears he sees all sorts of stuff going down his street- apparently there are some creeks and wooded areas that he’s more or less between, and they feed into the greater White Rock Lake park / greenbelt system.
I don’t doubt there were rabbits and all sorts of other critters near the Forest Ln. station- I think one of those creeks runs right near there.
I’m on greenville and 635 and pass by that area all the time. Between the cemetery and Richland College there is a large amount of wooded space for such a busy area.
A few years ago the apartment complex where I live was terrorized by a family of possums. It took two months to trap them all and relocate (or whatever animal control did with) them.
Last year I was at a pet store with my son. He saw some green anoles for sale and asked if we could get one. I said I’d catch one for him when we got home. He scoffed. He refused to believe that the “exotic” lizards in the store where the same ones he sees roaming on the walls outside our apartment all the time
As I was going for my afternoon site tour today I saw one of the neighborhood bald eagles soaring around. Sweet!
I also remembered that I’ve seen a couple ermine around town – one a couple years back running around the Zoo near the elephant enclosure, and one just a week or so ago skittering across the parking lot here at work. Cute lil’ white weasels they are.
Several months ago I saw five deer jumping over a chain-link fence, into the playground of a nearby school. Deer are very common in the farther suburbs, the ones that were wilderness just a generation ago, but I’ve ***never ***seen any this far toward the city. There’s no wilderness for quite a few miles. I can’t imagine what they had to go through, to get here.
I know even suburban deer are still wild animals and attacks do happen, but that afraid? Really?
I live on the NW edge of Chicago, near a Forest Preserve adjoining the Des Plaines River. The deer I encounter there will freeze when they first see me. If I want to watch them, I have to stand still to relax them a bit. Otherwise they’ll edge away.
There are exceptions, of course. I’ve noticed two does who will walk right up to someone holding food for them with very little fear. There are also people who leave stale bread for the deer. The deer have figured out that the rustling of the plastic wrapper = food, so any noise of that kind from a human will get them interested.
Don’t get me wrong, though. If I saw a full-grown buck with antlers or a doe approaching me with no fear, then I would be afraid.
Did he make enough for everyone?
I’ve said it here before, but I live in Chicago and there is a barn owl that lives in a tree behind my building. He’s really hard to see, you have to wait for dusk and then listen for the hoot. Then look real closely.
Around Fullerton and Western (On the south side of the corner) there are a whole bunch of black squirrels. That’s pretty cool.
People living around me routinely see all the usual smaller native wildlife mentioned above, up to and including deer and bobcats. Both alligators and American crocodiles are native here too. Lots of hawks and owls in the golf course communities, and many other birds of prey—‘the lake’ (Okeechobee) and both coasts are lousy with ospreys, and Florida has more nesting bald eagles than any state except Alaska. But since this area is perhaps the Capital of Exotic Wildlife ™ we also see and have had to deal with:
[ul]
[li]Lions (yes, the African kind)[/li][li]Tigers (like Tony- big, orange, black stripes)[/li][li]Leopards (spotted and black ones)[/li][li]A lengthy list of lesser cats[/li][li]5 foot iguanas (not bad, they’re herbivores)[/li][li]6 foot Nile monitors (not so nice- they’re carnivores that can predate your poodle)[/li][li]Spectacled caimans (nasty crocodilians, luckily they top out at about 8 feet)[/li][li]Giant constricting snakes (pythons of half a dozen species, up to 23 feet long)[/li][li]More different kinds of venomous snakes than I care to list- spitting cobras, death adders, mambas, and lots of other fun types[/li][li]Primates including Rhesus and Pig Tailed Macaques and a couple dozen kinds of monkeys[/li][/ul]
These are just some of the critters that have been found roaming the streets. A complete tally of what is actually here, in public and private collections, reads like the boarding list for Noah’s ark.
Once I spent an entire night chasing a European Red Stag through the streets of suburban Miami-Dade, with the help of the Sheriff’s brand new helicopter with FLIR (forward looking infra-red) acting as spotter. I never got close enough to put a tranquilizer dart into the animal, and we lost contact with it as dawn approached and the heli had to land to refuel. Amazing that an animal almost the size of an elk and wearing that set of antlers could completely disappear in a county of well over a million people, but there you go.
And I’m sure others will come to mind later.
deer can come into major cities down railway right of ways and river banks.
I read a stat a few years ago that deer kill more people in a year than cougars have killed in the last century. So yes, a wild animal when confronted can be extremely dangerous, even when it looks like Bambi.
I think you’ll find that Bambi performs those murderous acts by stepping in front of fast moving vehicles. Classic murder - suicide psychosis!
Since deer predominantly use “the edge” between forest and meadow, and since most of eastern North America was formerly covered by dense forest, there are actually many more deer now than when the Pilgrims landed.
Also more cars.
I’ve also seen a badger on the outskirts of town (I backed right the hell away from THAT one).
Just a note - Calgary is a city of over a million people (I know that there is a common misperception that all of Canada is the wilderness ).
People are reminded and warned every year (because there are always some fools who will mess with them) that the elk in Banff in the mountains are wild animals, and are not to be approached, even though they’re quietly and calmly strolling everywhere in town.
One of my favorite urban/wildlife interface stories is this one from 2002 wherin a coyote hopped a Portland-area light rail train at PDX. Notice the picture…coyote doesn’t even look particularly afraid, curled up in the seat, just waiting for the train to pull out for downtown.
There was a badger den in the ravine portion of a friend’s back yard in urban Mississagua (between the lake and the QEW).