Random yard guests | Pad Patter 29.3

My problem with snakes is that it's so darn hard for me, a former city slicker, to remember which snakes are "bad." So if there were a snake in my yard, I'd probably just move.

As for the question of "uninvited guests": One of the first mornings after we'd moved here from Houston, Texas, the kids started yelling "WHAT ARE THOSE?!" I ran to the morning room; there were about 4 deer in our backyard. I said "Those are deer" and I thought that was it...but my city kids had no idea what "deer" were! I had to explain it! My Michigander heart just hurt, but I understood: they'd grown up where the most "exotic" thing was armadillo roadkill. They really had no idea what deer were, even though, to my Michigander brain, deer were (for lack of a better term) boring.

And this isn't exactly what you meant, but 2 years ago I was sooo frustrated with the adorable bunnies hopping into my yard and eating my little sunflower sprouts. I saw one bunny eating them, but what could I do? They were cute furry bunnies! Last summer I moved where I planted my sunflowers, but they still found some of them. Sigh.

 

In the 19 years I've lived in this house, I've seen . . .
. . . 2 or 3 small snakes, which don't bother me
. . . too many spiders; they DO bother me!
. . . a few deer walking in the woods behind my house.
. . . lots of bunnies and squirrels
. . . several dogs and cats running loose

I don't have much of a story to tell about any of them. Seeing the deer surprised me, especially because they were heading north, toward the busy roads! I worried for their safety.

 

Yeah, we've had several slithers in our yard since we moved here-four in fact. Thankfully they were the non venomous kind. We see Bluejays and Cardinals and Woodpeckers daily. LOTS of them. We also have a HUGE squirrel that shook the tree so hard we thought we had a small Bobcat in our woods! Then there is the lovely fat cottontail rabbit we see many times a week. Love that.

 

It is a regular zoo here (well almost). We live within the city limits but it is very wooded and the local university owes a bunch of forest land right near us. We have all the normal birds plus a pair of Cooper's Hawks. Well, yesterday I heard one and guess what, it was sitting on a nest in a tree just outside my house!!! I hope to scrap a page soon with the pictures I took.

We also have raccoons, opossums, bunnies, moles, mice, and other furry critters in the back yard. The opossums are the USA's only marsupial and they are rather ugly. We have little lizards which are no big deal. We also have snakes, including several poisonous ones - shutter! And of course, spiders, bugs, beetles, and big roaches (but not Florida sized).

And deer, well they are kind of like pets here. Although I have not seen as many recently. One time my hubby came home to 11 of them on the front lawn. Once we had one die in the back yard and had animal control come remove it.

A red fox was living in the neighborhood under someone's deck. Recently neighbors have heard coyotes howling and several years back I thought I saw one while out walking. And several years before that a bear wandered into town. I think he got hit on the highway before they were able to capture him.

 

We live in the mountains of WNC. We've seen all sorts of animals...deer, rabbits, snakes, raccoons, etc...and once we even had a mama bear and her babies visit us! Most of those are normal visitors, but the bears were special.

 

We see a lot of deer here. They come right into our yard and bring their little babies with them. The neighbor's peacocks are regular visitors to our yard part of the year, too. Their tail feathers are so beautiful right now. We have also had a yearling cougar which is bad news. The young ones are more dangerous than the older ones I've been told. Then there are the birds...one this afternoon that was dark in color but under it's wings it was yellow and orange....so beautiful. And we also get wild turkeys, flying squirrels and regular squirrels. Bees and spiders. Just a part of life here.

 

Oh my goodness, Justine that's about the only critter I'm terrified of. I can't even look at pictures of snakes or watch them on TV. I know thonceey're all around us, but I've only seen a couple of them where we live now. We lived on a nature preserve years ago and we saw lots of them.

We've had a gator in the lake right behind our house and we had armadillos recently. You all probably saw my page about the doe that was right outside our door a month or so ago. Of course, we have lots of squirrels and geckoes and frogs, the typical tropical critters. We had a "resident hawk" for a few years, but haven't seen it for awhile. It always sat in the same tree.

 

One time my husband in his shed where he does his woodwork noticed a pile of scrap timber moving and on closer inspection he could see down among the wood a snake so he called me to grab my camera. I took a photo of what I could see to help identify it. It was not a poisonous snake or I would never have gone near the pile of timber... it was not black or brown which indicate our poisonous ones in our area. The snake was a Carpet Python. We left it alone that day and have not seen it back in the shed since.
Our neighbour one time called out for Ken and come and help with a snake in their yard. She did not need to worry as it was just a green tree snake. Ken tried to get it out of her backyard for her sanity and it ended up in a tree in our yard. Have not seen it since.

 

When we lived in the country back in Iowa we had all the regular wildlife including deer, skunks, raccoons, and snakes <insert shudder>. We also had a huge bald eagle roost on our deck occasionally. I was never fast enough to get the non-digital camera to capture and image of it.

 

Snakes love mulch so if you have mulch around your house expect snakes. We had a big raised flower bed on the side of my house with about 2 feet of mulch we kept getting snakes and then one spring about an hour after putting fresh mulch I saw white spots. At closer inspection it was a nest of about 10 snake eggs. my husband dug the eggs out and that very fall we remove the flower bed and I don't have any mulch anymore.

We regularly have deers but never get any pictures since they are really wild and will run quickly. We also get wild turkeys.

We also have hawks visit along with all kinds of birds.

Hubby has seen coyotes.

 

we just get pigeons, squirrels, magpies, and the neighbour's cats. We did see a hedgehog once. There's a strip of woodland behind the fence and most wildlife stays over there at least during the day. We hear owls at night and one of the trees near the end of the close is marked as protected due to roosting bats.

 

OMG - we have seen so much over the years. We're suburban country with some woods behind our house. We have deer, turkeys, red fox (and two baby foxes playing in the snow a few years ago- that was cute), raccoons, skunk (last night), flacons, coyote, ducks (including one that landed in our pool while the kids were swimming), snakes, chipmunks, and even a bobcat sighting ( a neighbors home), squirrels, doves, woodpeckers - so so many birds ... the list goes on!

Sometimes they make their way inside. A bat and multiple birds have been found inside our home - not fun!

 

Oh my! I would love that!

 

Snakes are one of my biggest fears. I can't deal with them at all. I would die.
I was on the rail trail at the end of summer last year and a black bear came out of the woods not too far from me. I froze but then was like whatever and took a photo. If it had been a snake I would have passed out! LOL

 

We have snakes occasionally and they don't bother me much as long as they stay outside lol But our youngest baby (cat) brought this in to the house last year as a gift


We also have a wide variety of other critters that visit occasionally...frogs, spiders, squirrels, rabbits, opossums, skunks, raccoons, mice, moles, hawks, deer. We don't really live in the country. We are in a subdivision in town with just some uncleared land behind our house.

A few years ago, we had this visitor

He was so cute, and of course Chance wanted to run right out and pet him. Not sure where mama was, but I'm sure not far away. He just sniffed around and then took off up the road lol

 

We live in Chicago.... so our random yard guests are rats the size of small cats. But honestly I don't see them too often. Someone near us has a feral cat colony, so they keep the rats in check and occasionally we'll have a feral feline visitor (they like to sun themselves on our garage roof deck). You can tell the registered feral cats because they have one docked ear.

Oh... and the tree next door is home to a squirrel who's single mission in life is to torment our dog.