After living in a rural town most of our lives, a little over a year ago, we moved to a suburban city. One of the biggest surprises about our new home is how much “wild” wildlife we see here.
Sure, at our previous home, with its large backyard enclosed by trees and bushes, we saw plenty of squirrels, rabbits, birds, and butterflies. The robins had parties in our yard in the spring, plucking through the leaves we hadn’t picked up, looking for insects to eat. And the monarch butterflies would stop over in the early fall, resting in our trees as they headed south.
We also had a few bats in the house over the years, along with two flying squirrels, which is a real treat at night as they leapt and bounced away while I was trying to catch them. There were too many mice to count, with our three cats being no help at all with them.
The only deer we ever saw in our 30 years in the old house was one on the street a few blocks down looking lost and confused. Otherwise, we didn’t see wildlife in town, though we often saw it on the edges of town, like at the museum where I worked. I never grew tired of seeing bald eagles soar over the museum, but wildlife didn’t usually venture into town proper.
In our new house, we have the typical squirrels and rabbits, the latter of which may be sheltering under our back deck. We also often see cardinals in the pine trees behind our house.
But the real treat is seeing several deer regularly in our neighborhood and yard. On March 26 this year, during a snowstorm, I looked out my window to see five deer run up the middle of the street in broad daylight, with one pausing in our yard.
A couple of days later, around dawn, I pulled open our living room curtains to see two deer laying under the large pine in front of our house.
And, this week, a couple of night’s ago, Erik flicked on the outdoor light and opened the door to make sure the car was locked and saw two deer lounging in the front yard like a couple of lazy cats. I’m not sure why our yard is so attractive to them, but it’s fun to see them so close.
There are many large natural areas interspersed with neighborhoods and shopping areas in our suburban city that make great corridors for wildlife. I suspect that’s why we see deer so often. We’ve also seen a fox or two running around the neighborhood.
This week, Erik happened to be close to home while working and stopped to grab something to drink. When he walked up the steps, he discovered the remains of an eviscerated rabbit on the front stoop, along with some scat. He suspected a fox of the carnage. Bold move to grab the rabbit so close to the house. Also, pretty gross.
Erik reassessed the situation when I spotted a barred owl swoop into one of our pine trees yesterday evening. (I always want to call them bard owls. 🙂 ) It kept watch over us as we did some yard work and took a few pictures of it, leaving after we had gone back inside.
Could the owl have taken out the rabbit on our stoop? We don’t know, but outside of the rabbit carnage, we’ll enjoy getting to know our wild, new, furry and feathered neighbors.
