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Pad Patter 10/13: Wildlife Encounters

Angie4b1g

Angie4b1g

A hundred jobs but Bob Villa ain't one
Joined
Feb 25, 2011
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Have you any?

I run on the wooded trails a lot, so I see my share of critters. Nothing too out of the ordinary, but our deer here aren't afraid of people so it does get weird sometimes. I'm busy looking where I'm going so I don't trip over a root, and suddenly there's a deer 2 feet from me in my peripheral view. There's always that moment of "OMG WTH IS THAT" before I realize it's just a deer. :dizzy
 
I had a deer encounter last week... I went for my walk later in the day than usual, so I was getting home around dusk and two deer trotted across the sidewalk/road right in front of me. It's a ravine that it right near my house and I've seen deer crossing there a lot, so I wasn't super surprised, but when the 2nd deer stopped and looked at me without a bit of fear, I was like... go on now... we don't need a meet and greet!

About 10 years ago my Sister, BIL and I went up to Isle Royale ( a little rock of an island North of the U.P. in Michigan almost to Canada) and did some serious roughing it/backpacking. While we were there we had a few encounters with Moose that was very unnerving. When you get to the island the Rangers tell you what to do if you encounter them. They said that they can't see very well and will charge at moving objects sometimes if they feel threatened. Well, we were sleeping in a khaki tent (aka camoflaged into the woods) and there were about 4 moose that walked right near us. I was scared they were going to walk over the top of us, so we all got out of the tent. They kept coming at us and the only place to go was off a small cliff into a VERY cold Lake Superior. Thankfully we started shouting and clapping our hands and then ran away. I did NOT want to go to sleep that night! LOL!
 
This time of year....DEER! I see them at camp, on the freeways, home, everywhere! But we also see armadillos and I've heard we have a bear around here also. I suppose with the cooler temps it allows for the animals to roam around a little more.
 
My hubs and I walk at 5am(ghastly time), and we see fox and coyote (they are way more scared of us). But once in the middle of the street was a bloody carcass of a deer. It must have fallen off a truck. I thought we were in the beginning scene of CSI! It was ghastly, and I was so so scared it was human!
 
I have had a few in my life. Mostly, oh crap situations.

My first was when I was 12...my family had huge average in the Catskills, and a friend and I went out hiking. We started up this hill/path and all of a sudden this THING screams at us, and starts running at us. We screamed back, and ran all the way home. It was a wild turkey. Freaked us out. I'm definitely sure I have memories that are worse they what happened, lol!

Next, I was dating my husband and we went to a family barbecue in Northern NJ lake/mountain area.... I went out front of the house and was calling my mom on my cell. DH comes around to see how I'm doing and waves at me from across the gravel street. He's got a look of OMG on his face. I freaked and then he freaked and asked why I was standing under a tree that a baby black bear was in!!! Um.... I didn't freakin see it! Hello.... (I have pictures of this somewhere too!)

Recently, I drove home and I live in the burbs. So, when I pull up to my house, and see two bucks (with antlers!!!) in my front yard I was like Holy Moly! They run to my backyard when I pull in the driveway.... I run in the house, and yell for ALL the boys to come look. We all stared at them for 20 minutes in my backyard, lol! (I think I have pics of this too!)

So.. yes, those are my most outstanding wildlife memories. LOL!
 
My own house is way too much in "town" for much in the way of critters, the weirdest was a mole in the pool. At my dad's on the lake, it's completely normal to see wild turkeys, sand hill cranes and the occasional alligator all down by the water. I take my dog with me over there and he acts all big and bad until you let him out near those birds... big sissy, comes running back to mama when the birds flap their wings and "yell" at him.
 
I have grown up in a city, so pigeons and cockroaches were the only wildlife encounter for the most of my life, except once that there was a baby moose that stumbled into the traffic, and the main street had to be suspended and moose sent back to the nature reserve... but that's when I was 11? Since then we've moved, and moved again, now I have a badger, fox and pine martin just coming and going (back garden) as they please, deer who walk into the garden and eat my pumpkins, and a fire salamander who happens to like it in the front garden under my window... we have tree frogs in the trees, and as far as I go no need for anything more exciting than that as far as the visitors go. Oh yes, and the bats that lived inside the frame of my main door, that gave me creeps and made me use the back door for two months until they moved... so it's pretty much like the zoo, I didn't tell you about the snakes in the pond, and the summer visitors: common lizards and ramarros, not bad for a city girl, hey?
 
We have wild turkeys that will show up out of the woods across from our house every so often. And there are a lot of deer, too.

I remember seeing javelinas (seriously ugly animals) and roadrunners when we lived in Arizona.
 
we live in the country-ish burbs and we see a lot of wildlife ... juvenile raccoons feeding from my neighbors' bird feeders in the middle of the day, deer, wild turkey, had a nest of baby bunnies in our garden this year, snakes, frogs, toads, coyotes, herons land on our roof sometimes, a duck once landed in our pool while my kids were in it, foxes (have a photo of 2 baby foxes playing in our yard in the snow), even saw a peregrine falcon. my husband saw a moose in the parking lot of his job a few years ago (about 30 minutes away). and a neighbor had a bobcat jump at her cat sitting in her big bay window, but i have not encountered that one! we are out on the Appalachian Trail a lot (and surrounding trails) and I tell ya, we see more stuff in our yard then out there.

i'm not even sure what a javelina or a ramarro is ... need to google those 2!
 
jenn mccabe said:
i'm not even sure what a javelina or a ramarro is ... need to google those 2!
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A javelina is kind of like a wild pig. I think they call it a skunk pig, actually.
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A hawk. Every day walking from the bus stop one hawk planes right in front of us.
 
on my way to work one morning I had to stop in the middle of the road for a bunch of wild turkeys who were going from one field to another (took their sweet time as well) and a week later it was a slam the brakes (say a few words) as two deer came flying across the street. Also had to stop in the middle of the road for a couple of Canada geese, ducks, family of raccoon. My favourites were the day I came out of the house and saw two deer in our backyard, I had to tell my now ex to grab the dog and another time and another time when there were four baby raccoon in our garage...helped us figure out where the marshmallows that were left by the campfire went, lol.

A kingfisher invaded my pond once, ate my little goldfish but thankfully he didn't get to the Koi in the back pond which I think is thanks to my yellow lab.

I had a horse in my front yard once, it had escaped from the stable across the road. Good thing about living in a small village at the time, the neighbours blocked traffic (lived on a main road) while the stable hand and assistant calmed him down and got it back to the paddock.
 
ashleywb said:
I was bitten by a monkey once. Not pretty.
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I do not like Monkeys at all!! I was bitten by a possum in our back yard, I don't like possums anymore either (although they are quite cute and fluffy but very noisy)

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We have had a kangaroo, a rabbit, a fox, a blue tongue lizard and many, many parrots of all descriptions at our place (we are less than 10km's from the city centre - not called the bush capital for nothing! These King parrots are the most common here
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It is only a matter of time before we get a snake I suppose, have seen them on nearby bike paths and there are kangaroos everywhere, if you ever want to see a lot of kangaroos, come and visit, would take less than 10minutes to find heaps of them...
 
We live next to the river with a trail running along it up into the mountain. We get a lot of bears, coyotes, hawks and eagles. I hate when the bears poop in our yard and last fall a bear sat on our fence and knocked it down. Everyone has to lock their garbage cans or keep them inside b/c the bears will drag it all over the yard and street. The coyotes go in the schoolyard behind us late at night and howl. It's a really freaky sound.
 
We were bike riding through our local park when we crossed a bridge and right in the middle of it was a great big brown snake sunning itself ... its considered to be the second most poisonous land snake so as you can imagine we backed away VERY VERY quickly!

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Just deer, frogs....other little critters around here

When I was in Australia I ran in to all sorts of things! It was pretty cool!!

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I've spent a lot of time up at Jasper (national park in Canada) so I've seen and experienced my share of wildlife. I remember when I was quite young (10, maybe?) and we were having a picnic up at Myette Hot Springs. We had just laid out the picnic box with all the food when a 2-year-old bear (those that have just left their mama) came into the picnic area. People scattered and the bear had his pick of all the lunches. When it got to our table (we were off at a distance), my dad got mad it was going to eat our food, so he took a rolled up newspaper and whacked it across the snout. He's lucky it just ran off. The bear was probably as scared as the other people around!

When I was about 15, I was cross country skiing with my Dad up near Whistler Campground in Jasper. I took a final solo trip around the 4 km loop and was watching my feet and zoning out when all of a sudden I "felt" the complete silence. I looked up to find that I had accidentally skied into a herd of elk (large deer). I looked at them all around me, and they looked at me. It was scary and amazing all at the same time. I executed a perfect 180 turn and silently skied out of the herd as quickly as I could.
 
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