Thursday, April 26, 2012

Night Visitors 2

Tandi is up to two 10-minute walks per day now, though still not able to be with other dogs, as she gets too excited and wants to run or dance around. I try to take her when I don't think other dog owners will be out, but  I'm not always successful. While coming back towards the house the other day, I ran into Kathy, who has two Westies and another terrier, whose actual breed I can't remember, and lives up the street and around the curve from me.

After asking about Tandi, she asked if she'd told me about the bear yet. "Oh, did you see the bear in my yard?" I asked. She got a confused look on her face, and said, "No, in MY yard." AHA! Seems one smashed her feeders, too, even carrying one into another neighbor's yard. She said the dogs were going nuts, barking like crazy. She now brings her feeders in at night. I haven't bought any more yet, because I'm not sure I'll always remember to bring them in before going to work. The birds will just have to fend for themselves for a while.

Then 2 days ago, my neighbor The Mower Man came putt-putting up to mow my lawn. He lives closer to the entrance to our neighborhood, and he actually saw a mom and 2 cubs foraging around down by his house. In fact, he's had to find a different place for his trash cans. He said Mama Bear had shooed the cubs up a couple of trees while she snuffled around, and then WHOOSH!--she was up a tree in no time flat. Up until then, he'd thought he was okay being several yards away behind a chain link fence, trying to take pictures.

While at Home Depot last Friday, I ran into Mark, another nurse who lives just a few doors up from Kathy. Seems he has a nightly visitor, too--a raccoon. This one is rather bold; he comes right up onto the front porch. Mark said he grabbed his camera and was clicking away, flash and all, while the raccoon simply sat up and posed.

Oh, and Mower Man reported spotting coyote tracks in the field back behind his house, out of the subdivision. While bears will ignore dogs and cats, coyotes will go for them.

Taking Tandi out for a last, late night potty run is becoming disconcertingly treacherous.


5 comments:

Katie said...

Wild kingdom!!! :-)

audreypawdrey said...

My goodness! I would worry about it too! We have a family of foxes (mom, dad, and 7 little ones!) a couple of houses down from us and a coyote in the neighborhood, and I worry about letting our little dog out alone in the backyard, too.

Lori said...

well, no mountain lion or bobcat to tangle witH--SO FAR! They do have them along the river in the tree breaks. They try to avoid people. Do the bears move away from people making noise? The racoons and deer aren't very afraid. We do have lots of skunks--and they aren't afraid of ANYTHING! Mostly we have turkeys, deer, rabbits, pheasants, small critters like racoons, opossums, ground hog, fox, a few coyotes, 13 striped ground squirrels. Lots of birds. A few elk, mule deer,whitetail deer, and further west pronghorn antelope.

MightyMom said...

My goodness!! Cay-otes and Ra-coons and BEARS Oh My!!!!

Unknown said...

"Scraps" has been included in this weeks A Sunday Drive. I hope this helps to attract even more new visitors to here.

http://asthecrackerheadcrumbles.blogspot.com/2012/05/sunday-drive_13.html