Surprise Visit

I have lived in the country all my life. I live in a very wooded area in southern Missouri. I have always loved this time of year when the animals are starting to come out and bring their babies. My father caught raccoons the other day. Some people he knows were getting ready to knock down a house and was doing the last final run through and found a family of raccoons living in the attic. The babies are TINY! But are VERY cute. LOL If they didnt get mean when they get older I would love to get one to keep around here as a pet. We had one when I was about 12 years old...the dog was worse then any cat or dog you could have. Slept in my bed and had run of the house LOL. He got older and mean so we had to get rid of him because at the time my sister was just a baby. So we gave him to a couple with no kids. We have 3 calves that we bottle feed and my 3 year old LOVES that. ALthough he doesnt really got do it alot because...they are sometimes to aggressive. LOL

wow! That's wonderful Ldyjarhead, I also love nature and God's creature, in our area, we have squirrels, different types of birds which are very colorful and a rabbit! Last time, when I had to clean the yard, I found a snake and my husband find out he has no teeth, so, we let him go and enjoy life!LOL! It's really wonderful to have them as long as they are harmless!

When we were back in Ohio, we had critters around. Even though we were in the suburbs, there was enough of a wooded area by the river to give them a habitat. We actually had a herd of deer running down the middle of our street one day. We had raccoons, woodchucks and of course, tons of squirrels. Now that we are in the dessert kind of, we don't have much right by our house. The golf course is loaded with huge jackrabbits though. The occasional coyote, mountain lion, bear, and bobcat wander in to the city, but not by us! I just had a hummingbird pausing outside my window. I love watching them.

I live in a rural area, too, and I love it. I have bird feeders, birdbaths and birdhouses in my backyard. I keep the birdfeeders full and then scatter a lot on the ground, too. My feeders are squirrel-proof (so far), so I have to put some on the ground for them and for the birds, like Mourning Doves, who don't use the feeders. This year we have had tons of birds. From tiny little wrens to crows and ravens. We even see geese and seabirds sometimes. We always have lots of rabbits (who have their babies out now), and squirrels. I have a opossum that comes every night to eat, but I have seen her out in the day time, too. We used to have lots of lizards, salamanders, frogs and toads, but I have been seeing less and less of them in recent years. That is really worrying. Snakes are welcome, too, as long as they are not copperheads or cottonmouths! We had a cottonmouth last year that was about 7 feet long. Maybe more! I can't stand those. Rarely I will see red foxes. I know they are in the woods, but you hardly ever see one. It's a treat when you do, though! Loved your picture! I need a better camera with a long lens so that I can get some pictures, too!

every year brings something new frequenting our yard.. this year we had a flock of wild turkeys coming by eating out of our compost and playing with our dog. best guess there was about 6-7 hens and one BIG tom.. my daughter and i managed to get a few feet from them early one morning, and it was a nice start to the day LOL weve had coyote ramble through.. theres a falcon nesting somewhere nearby and has started hunting my yard and drags whatever hes killed to the top of a broken tree outside my livingroom window, we often have lunch together lol groundhogs, rabbits and squirrels, and a mole the other day that was foraging around my front steps so close to me i reached down and petted his little pudgy butt, he turned and squeaked at me LOL my father in law had a chipmunk that lived in our flowerbed.. and would jump up onto the bricks next to him whenever he was sitting there.. little bugger even sat up and sniffed his elbow one day. ducks that nested in our pool before we had it demolished.. a skunk that my husand thought was a cat when it came rubbing up against his legs one night when we were out with a fire going.. but i think the most fun coinhabitants were the fox. a mama made a den under the deck of the now removed pool.. and had 3 babies. the four of them would run and play in our yard whether we were out there or not, and they were a ball to watch. one day while i was soaking up some sun.. i saw something pass right by my side. thinking it was the wild kitty (who has also adopted us) i reached out to pet her.. and it wasnt the cat, it was the mama fox, a foot away from my outstretched hand.. just sitting in the grass lookin at me. we sat looking at each other for a few minutes, then she moseyed on her way. unfortunately, the only times ive had my camera nearby was the mole the other day. (i have gotten video of the falcon tho, his schedule is nearly like clockwork) i should wear one of those mini digi cameras around my neck LOL

I live in the city but in an outlying area where there is a creek, some wooded areas and a golf course close by and the zoo is less than a mile away as the crow flies. One night I came home from having worked an evening shift and just couldn't believe my eyes when my headlights picked up two large deer in my yard as I turned into the driveway. They were just grazing and ambling along like they didn't have a care in the world. There is an alley behind my house and I kept checking on them as they walked down the alley and over to another yard. I eventually called the police to report them (lol...can you believe? reporting deer?) as I was thinking that they may have gotten away from the zoo. After about an hour, I lost track of them. The police did come and run a patrol but I never found out the final disposition of the displaced deer. One day I had about two dozen Canadian geese out in the yard (btw, I have a large yard). The golf course has a small lake in it and the geese are usually down there. Why they chose my yard that day to pillage, I don't know. Geese leave such a mess with all of their doo-doo droppings. Anyway, I couldn't let the dog or the cat out that day as the geese hung around for hours. I've also seen rabbits out there. When I first moved here, I had a daily visit from a rabbit that had obviously escaped from someone's custody. He wasn't a wild one. He was white with black spots and floppy ears. I tried to befriend him one day and one of the neighbors (one of those that watch everything from the back window...nosey people, ya know) opened her back door (at least 300 yards up the hill) and called down to me to leave it alone and that it was a 'fixture' in the neighborhood. He just stopped coming around so I suppose he couldn't survive on his own. I see various birds all of the time as cardinals, red-winged blackbirds, bluebirds, blue jays, hummingbirds in addition to the usual sparrows, chickadees, and the black bossy 'grackles' and sometimes a crow or a raven. I've got a feeder out for the ones who stay around during the winter. That's about the extent of my 'nature preserve'. I wouldn't have thought there would be even that much since I'm in a city.

We use to have racoons visit, before it got built up so much..So all we have now are rabbits that are brave enough to show up with all the dogs around....