The Wild Animals are Here!

[MineralMan]

I live in a residential neighborhood in St. Paul, MN. Little by little, the wild animals are infiltrating into the city itself. Along with the deer, squirrels, rabbits, and the occasional groundhog or woodchuck, some new critters have shown up this Spring. A week ago, a red fox ambled down our street, and this morning a small group of wild turkeys stopped by my front yard and sampled the overflow from our bird feeder. This past fall, a pair of pileated woodpeckers spent two days in our huge silver maple tree. What's next, I wonder? Perhaps a black bear will wander through. Last year one visited a neighborhood just about a mile away, so that's not out of the realm of possibility.

It's interesting to me that animals that were once displaced by the buildup of cities and city neighborhoods are beginning to come back into those same places. Free from hunting pressure, since firearms can't be discharged within the city limits, they seem to be experimenting with coexisting with humans again. There's plenty of food around, and people seem to enjoy having them nearby. Maybe we'll welcome them on a larger scale.

Personally, I'm glad to see them. I take it as a good sign.

[Lint Head]

1. Ah spring!

[MineralMan]

2. And a very early one, at that.

[mike_c]

3. always seems strange to read accounts like this...

...as I've pretty much always lived in rural places where wildlife is common, and here on California's north coast it's especially so. We have herons and egrets everywhere, bear are pests, lions are common-- we hear warnings several times a year about mountain lions wandering through our little rural town at night. Keep an eye on your pets. Couple of years ago a pair of grey fox raised a litter in my backyard-- that was before we got the dogs, of course-- and until the dogs moved in I entertained skunks and raccoons pretty much every night, since I have a cat door. I liked the skunks just fine-- only had one "incident" indoors over several years-- but raccoons are just too destructive and aggressive, hence the dogs. I've seen mustellids in my yard, presumably weasels. Coyotes, of course. And I have hunter friends back east who work for years to develop sufficient skill to approach wild turkeys, while here they wander through campsites and occasionally yards, almost close enough to touch. Deer are everywhere, like bears they're often in conflict with humans because they raid gardens and trash cans.

[MineralMan]

4. Yes. I used to live in more rural surroundings, too.

I was missing the critters. But, here they are anyhow. This past fall, I discovered a short-tailed shrew living under my sidewalk. Didn't show any fear of me, really, so I started watching it. It was collecting peanuts I was throwing for the squirrels. I didn't realize that they ate seeds sometimes until I did a little research. The next day, I offered the little shrew a nice peanut in the shell from my hand. It walked right up and took it. Fun.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Wild Turkeys here as well, they usually stay in the hills, not this year....

They are rather large and cause pedestrian confusion, postal carrier trepidation...lots of fun. The bears are not coming into this town although they do in smaller towns in the county.

[Fix The Stupid]

6. Yes...

Yes, I live in Southern Ontario... Black Bear habitats are at least a 5 hour drive north of us. Just read something the other day that we can expect bears within our area in 10-15 years.

Doesn't bother me. I kind of like the idea of not being the biggest creature in the woods...keeps you on your toes...

Just evolution in action. Animals adapting any way they can. Nature is freakin amazing.

[MineralMan]

9. My parents own a citrus farm in California. Bears come down from the

surrounding hills into their orchard every year. I guess they like oranges.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. I used to see dozens of wild turkeys living down near Rochester.

[MineralMan]

8. They're increasing in numbers really quickly.

They're all over St. Paul, especially down by the river. Cool stuff, although they're pretty protective during nesting season.

[Aerows]

10. Raccoons are practically an epidemic here

Deer are not uncommon. I even saw a wild pig once, but that was after Katrina so it was probably just displaced by the storm.

[MineralMan]

11. Raccoons are quickly making inroads

in Minnesota, too. A troop was in our yard, mom and three youngsters, last summer, eating the squirrel's peanuts. They were more brown in color than the California ones I used to hand feed.

[Aerows]

12. We have a troop

a Mother and 3 little ones that visit frequently if I forget to take the cat food in at night. I had a little container of treats and they were able to get into it.

They are fearless too. I went out on the porch one night and I was thinking to myself, oh, look at the big kitties! They didn't even go anywhere. Then I realized "Oh. Those aren't kitties". LOL

[MineralMan]

13. True. They're not really afraid of humans

too much, especially where they encounter them fairly frequently. When they showed up at my house in California to eat from the dry cat food bowl, I began opening the back door to watch them. No alarm at all. Then I discovered that they thought peanuts in the shell were a rare treat. The first time I held one out in my fingers, one of the raccoons just walked right up and took it in its front paws and then sat there and ate it.

They were pretty good neighbors, really. During the cool of winter (California, remember) I'd sometimes wake up to use the bathroom, and there would be one sleeping on the couch. We had an oversized cat door, so they just came in and left as they pleased. Never did any damage, never bothered the cats. Polite characters they were. Fortunately, the people who bought our house when we moved to Minnesota were good with the raccoons, too. In fact, that may have been one of the reasons they bought.

In some parts of the country, though, raccoons are rabies carriers. Not in California, though. I checked, and the wildlife officials said that they had no records of any rabid raccoons.

[hifiguy]

17. Once I was taking out the garbage

and as I walked out the door and down the steps to the driveway a pair of raccoons gave me the Noo Yawk "wuddayoodoin' here" look and slowly ambled off. And that was on 55th and France Avenue in Edina. I used to hear the raccoons "arguments" in the back yard every so often too. They needed some alternative dispute resolution, IMO.

[jwirr]

14. Good to hear that. Some years ago in Two Harbors MN we had a bear cub up in an apple tree. The

elderly lady who owned to tree asked me to help her rescue her apples - so there we were under that tree picking as many apples as we could reach while the bear sat on the upper branches watching us. Also had a tiny baby cub who must have lost its mother in our yard. It would crawl up into a tree just outside our window and hang its legs over the branch so it could take a nap. The DNR brought a big barrel trap to catch it and it would have worked but they forgot to close the end door. There were people in our building who wanted to bring it inside in their closet for the winter so the owner had to call the DNR. Finally they caught it and took it out of the city limits.

[MineralMan]

15. Black bears aren't really aggressive animals.

If you treat them with respect and don't interfere with a female with cubs, they get along OK with casual associations with humans, mostly. Lots of people in northern MN have bears as regular visitors to their yards. I once picked blueberries on one side of a big clump of blueberry bushes, while a bear ate blueberries on the other side of the clump. No problems.

[hifiguy]

16. I used to live a couple blocks from Richfield's Wood Lake

Nature Center. Raccoons galore necessitated tall and/or securely closable garbage cans. Squirrels by the zillions, including a couple of albinos and rabbits aplenty. One summer evening I saw a red fox flit through the neighbors' yard. And someone behind me kept a few chickens (either that or I was repeatedly having aural hallucinations). No shortage of critters there.

[MineralMan]

18. Yeah, Minnesota's pretty critter friendly.

All those parks and lakes and ponds everywhere. It's great!