Wildlife in Your Life

Last week I was trimming a tree for a friend, and next to her is an empty lot that the owners never take care of....about once a year I pick the lot up and clear off any small trees, so the city worker can get a clear path with the bush hog. I often use the lot to pile brush I clear off from around town, then I burn it whenever a good time presents itself. This year I hadn't gotten to it yet, so another neighbor picked up most of the lot, then burnt off the tall grass. He left a spot smaller than 20 x 20....there was some large limbs laying it in, and I guess he didn't want to catch them on fire.

In that 20 x 20 area, I found 5 baby bunnies, two adult doves....who refused to leave the area, never did see their nest, but didn't try to hard...didn't want to disturb them...and one garter snake....the snake did not survive the encounter. I would assume there was prob a mouse or two living in the area as well, just didn't see any.

I live in a very small town, that is surrounded by vast areas of open farmland, with a tree line every so often, so wildlife is sparce....more live in town that out by far. I thought it was neat though that so much life existed in that tiny patch of grass that was less than a foot high.

This week, I found a litter of kittens in my shed....the mother had died, so my wife took them and she has been bottle feeding them. They are just now opening thier eyes, so they were just a few days old when I found them. If you have never done this...bottle feeding kittens....there are generally two problems, getting the hole in the nipple just the right size, and getting them to go to the bathroom afterwards. She has done this a few times, and this time was no different....at first we could not get the milk flow adjusted right, but after a solid nights frustrating attempts, things in the "in" department started to take off....it's pretty cute when they are that small...when they finally latch on and get some milk...their ears will twitch like crazy, I suppose mainly from the jaw motions, but it appears like they are doing it out of sheer happyness.

The "out" dept did not go so well, mothers will lick the bellies to induce the stool, our best way to duplicate this is with a wet cotton ball...usually does the trick but isn't very clean. Luckily this morning, one of our little rat terriers, decided that they were her babies, and she has taken over that aspect of the rearing. She has had two litters herself, one, her first was just a single pup...then her second litter was a full 5 pups. She is a very tough little mother, and is treating the kittens just as she did her own babies. All the other dogs are not allowed within two feet of her...it's pretty comical...we are keeping them in a pet taxi, and when my wife feeds them, she just leaves the door open and takes one out at a time....if any dog gets close, the mother flies out of the little box like a cookoo clock....takes care of business, then retreats just as quick as if she were loaded on a spring.

My wife has to put the fed ones into another box, to keep them straight...and once they majority of kittnes are out of the taxi, the mother moves into the box also. My daughter found another kitten, that had a piece of a very tough weed tied around a leg, so we also have that one in the care center as well...he/she is in another box, and one of our male terriers keeps guard over it...but he just licks it's head from time to time and mostly just stares at it.

I should try to get the mocking bird on audio.....

2packs - great story about your dog, kitty-mama.

Omigod, that is so dang cute.

my fav wildlife is the family of whiptailed geckos that live in the stone-block wall that makes our raised bed garden. they seem to have become accustomed to my presence and they scamper about near me when I sit down to rest on the block wall.

hmmm... I've never made lizard friends....

2P and wife, I'm your fan.

Enough with the mush.

when Walter was here last spring he managed to get several photos of my gecko family. Perhaps he will post some of them here.

I just wrote several pages about my puma encounter on the Uncompaghre Plateau and somehow deleted it all.

Really, Dys? I've so hoped you'd post that..


Try going back and back..

Over a year after arriving in North America, I'm still adapting to the idea that this is really, truly a different continent than Europe. Two months ago for example, I was asking in my hiking thread what these birds were:


I was startled when American friends told me they're robins. Although their colors are fairly similar to the robins we have in Germany, their size seemed way off. Robins in Europe are barely larger than canaries, so I had thought this possibility way too implausible to consider. American wildlife is weird.

Another reminder that I'm on a new continent, and this sounds more morbid than I mean it, is the roadkill here. Sure -- America, too, has its share of rabbits and deer, just as we had in Germany. But here in New Jersey, the largest share of the roadkill is made up of raccoons and skunks. (Speaking of skunks -- some of the wildlife smells different here, too. America is a great country for many reasons, but the scent of its skunks isn't one of them. Good thing Americans are doing such a vigorous job of running them over.)

Bears -- Germany doesn't have them. I'm still not sure how freaked out I should be about them as a practical threat on my hiking excursions. As freaked out as about wild boars? That I could handle -- many of our cars here in New Jersey are way more aggressive and dangerous than that, and I now navigate the roads of the Garden State with calm and comfort. Or should I be more freaked out about bears than about wild boars? No idea. I just have not developed any good intuition yet. Maybe some day I can sit down with some bears over a tasty run-over raccoon BBQ, talk things over, and come to a mutually satisfactory understanding.

Great post, Thomas. I've not a clue about bears, but have friends who do and so what. I'll post if I hit any useful sites.

http://baconphoto.com/travel/2000-dom/index.shtml

Damn you, Dys! Now you made me itch to come back to the Southwest!

And I just edited a bunch of story that I think might impinge on a person I used to care a lot about, quite apropo.

Oh wow, never heard of that place before, Dys, but I will go there one day.

By the way, Cass/quinn has a neighborhood puma where she lives now (rural connecticut).

The Robins have been crapping on cars all over my neighbourhood up until two weeks ago. They have a look in the side mirrors and poop before flying off to the next car in line, where they do it all over again. One neighbour solved the problem by draping a rag over the mirror each night. They're so common here, I find them to be irritating, though I admit I'm sometimes captured for several minutes as I watch them hopping sideways on the lawn, looking for worms. Last weekend I watched as the same bugger came back to the deck repeatedly (for nest material), though I think most Robins' nests were built several weeks earlier in these parts.

This past weekend I was happy to watch several hawks, a Heron, and a mink, all on or over the cottage property. Spent a few minutes admiring a Pileated woodpecker, too (big one!), before hoping it would fly away (it did) somewhere else.

they found each other

Yeah, Izzie posted a picture of a "robin" at some point and it didn't look at all like a robin to me. The guys you posted are what I think of when I think of robins.

The baby robins in the nest just outside one of my doors seem to be doing well. They're getting bigger at an alarming pace, anyway, though their eyes still aren't open and they look incredibly pitiful. Sozlet and E.G. assure me that they don't make noise, but to me they look like they're saying, "AHHHHhhhhhhhh....!" <beak closes> "Maaaaa maAAAAAAAH!!!" They alternate between craning their necks upwards, maws open wide, and waiting for someone to drop something in already, and drooping disconsolately. Sozlet wants to dig up a bunch of worms and put them in a bucket under the nest to save the mama robin some work. She looks stressed.

Re: bears, are you wondering whether you should worry about whether you'll run into a bear at all (how common they are where you plan to walk), or about whether they're a threat if you do run into them? I don't know much about the former, but you really don't want to run into a bear if that's what you're wondering. I went on hikes in Colorado with extremely experienced, non-alarmist folks -- former Eagle Scouts and the like -- and they did NOT want to go up against a bear.