When you live in a rural area, you have to accept the fact that certain kinds of critters were here before you got here. So I guess it’s natural for them to assume certain rights of domain and territorial prerogatives. It doesn’t concern them that a bunch of homes have been put in and basically interrupted their normal habitat, and the strange two-legged animals think they are the only ones that matter and that they’re in charge. “Not so,” says Mother Nature. In some regards, they see this human habitat as a possible new food supply, and maybe not even excluding consumption of the two-legged animals.
We have a lot of deer that still find their way into our little neighborhood, and I’ll come back to that in a little while. Deer’s natural predator is not just man. Not too many years back, after a good rain I was out cleaning the storm drain that goes nowhere when I noticed a number of rather large paw prints. I backtracked to where they came from and found the remnants of a freshly killed animal. It was in such a state, I couldn’t be sure if it was a dog or a cat or one of the wild beasties. Anyway, whatever got this animal did some rather intricate surgical work.
My next-door neighbor saw me in back, came out to check out what I was doing. This is the same guy that probably reported me to the fire district, but that’s a different story. I showed him the paw prints and told him that that it was a pretty good size mountain lion. We natives call them Pumas. He looked at me and said, “No, that’s a dog print.” We went across the street and could see where this “dog” had climbed over a 6 foot fence, assuming because of the blood spots, with part of its dinner still in its mouth. This guy still wasn’t buying it.
We went back and looked at the prints again and I commented that I couldn’t think of any canine that would have a foot like that. He still insisted that it was a dog. My suggestion to him was “Well, if you see it, don’t try to pet it, because it’s a mountain lion disguised as a dog!” It turns out that a number of domestic animals had been killed in our little area and a warning was issued to the residents to keep their eye out for a mountain lion disguised as a large poodle. I jest! The disguise was really not a poodle, but a St. Bernard.
One of the other examples of wild inhabitants would be the raccoons, which were extremely clever and persistent. It doesn’t seem to matter to a hungry raccoon that there is a relatively sophisticated locking mechanism on a garbage can. They could figure out how to open it faster than JJ could figure out how to close it. Many a morning I would go out to get the paper and be greeted by garbage scattered from one end of the driveway to the other. In one instance, they chewed off the locking mechanism on the garbage can. I got a new one with a twist top that was advertised to be foolproof, but it didn’t say to whom, because I don’t think it slowed the raccoons down one second. Maybe the “fool” part was meant for the guy that bought it.
One evening after it was dark, I was reading and heard a bunch of racket. I turned on the outside lights and discovered a raccoon stuck in one of the containers. I kicked it over to let this little devil out, naturally scattering garbage all over the driveway. Damn raccoon didn’t even say thanks – it just slowly walked away. I cleaned up the garbage and decided it was time to go to bed. I think the little sucker just hid until I was gone and then went back, because the next morning, sure enough there was garbage scattered all over “hell and gone.” I figured if this ever happened again I would just leave it in the garbage can, presuming it would be a wake-up call for the garbage pickup people, or as they preferred to be called “sanitation engineers.”
I thought I had successfully defeated this problem by building a wood fence that retained the cans. The problem with that was that if I forgot to pull the cans out on Monday, the garbage man would leave everything as is, meaning I was still the proud owner of 30 gallons of garbage. I guess opening a little gate was not in their job description. The final solution was called “the bungee cord,” and it worked as long as the troops would remember to attach it. Raccoons have their place in this world; I’m not real sure where it is, but I know it’s not in my garbage cans nor swimming around in my pool in the middle of the night.
We have always had our fair share of deer visiting both the front and the backyard when we leave the gates open. Most of the time the invasion is in the spring. The Does would show up with their young ones. We must have entered into the fifth-generation of these visitors. Quite frankly, they’re so pretty I don’t see how anybody can shoot them. Part of the problem is they will eat anything except the weeds and these Does raise hell with roses and other succulents. The other aspect of this is “where Bambi goes, nothing grows.” So we end up with brown spots all over the yard. But it’s okay! The grass grows back fast, but it’s the potted plants that really take hell.
Every so often we would unknowingly close up all the gates and have deer trapped in the backyard. This gets unpleasant in a hurry. They start running around the backyard, taking out anything in their way and trying all of the access points that are now closed. The mature deer have no trouble jumping over my six-foot grape stake fence, however the young ones can’t do that, and usually in a flight of panic, go crashing through the stakes. This can get expensive in a hurry, predicated on the price of grape stakes these days, if you can even find them.
One morning a few years ago, I had to go out to what I call the Back 40, where the vegetable garden is, and there was this eight point buck eating apples off my tree. He turned and saw me, and lowered his head. I turned, and lowered mine as I was running for the safety of the house. He was a big brute, for coastal deer. I could see the headlines, “Local man gored 53 times while attempting to capture Bambi’s father, barehanded. The assailant was last seen eating apples and smiling.” I told Blue-eyes what had happened and her comment was, “You mean to tell me you’re afraid of a little tiny deer?” My retort was, as Little Beaver would say, “You bet-chem, Red Ryder!” (If you don’t know who Little Beaver was, or for that matter Red Ryder, you clearly never owned a Red Ryder Lever Action BB gun. Look it up on the web, it’s too difficult to explain. And if you are at a loss about Bambi, you’re in real trouble.)
Another type of wild beastie that we’ve seen on occasion includes some rather large bobcats. They hang around out back, and their primary interest seems to be the squirrels. One weekend I was standing on the patio looking out toward the stall, and all of a sudden this bobcat leaped from somewhere and landed a good 8 feet up a birch tree where a squirrel had been sitting. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The squirrel was toast! The bobcat slowly came out of the tree, walked onto the lawn, and sat there for a few minutes making sure lunch wasn’t going to go anywhere. Based on that event, I always look around when I go back by the birch trees. I didn’t bother to tell my flaky neighbor, because he probably would’ve said, “It’s a dog!” I can see the headlines now, “JJ’s (who as we reported was recently gored) flaky neighbor, loses three fingers while attempting to pet a bobcat. His only explanation to the press after this incident was, “I thought it was a dog!”
We used to have a few skunks when we first moved in, but they seem to have diminished. I saw one a few months back on the back lawn during the day, kind of wandering in an erratic fashion. I was a little concerned because what miniscule understanding I have about skunks is they can be prone to being rabid. I watched it for a while and it seemed disoriented. I always thought skunks were more nocturnal, so I decided to call the animal control people in our county government. Once I got through the multilingual recording, with 14 options and talked to a live person, I was told that the earliest they could get out there would be in two days. I really felt comfortable with the fact that our local government would be on the scene to support the situation, if indeed “Pepe La Pew” was rabid. Part of my concern was that my neighbor would adopt it, convinced it was a dog.
Moral of the story – Animal rights are one thing, but I think more of them need to be house trained.
J.J. Addingnuttin 