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WILD ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS
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Oh! I have another! We have coyotes that sometimes find their way to our neighborhood because there’s still some large areas of undeveloped land.
Well one night I was walking the dog when I look up and see a coyote silhouette right up the street from us, and it was lookin’ right at us. So I slowly picked up the dog (because he’s snack sized, yo) and calmly walked home as the coyote left because there was no longer a smol target for him to have to dinner. I bought a whistle after that, to use if I had to walk the dog at night again.
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@cornpopped said in WILD ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS:
Oh! I have another! We have coyotes that sometimes find their way to our neighborhood because there’s still some large areas of undeveloped land.
I was just telling someone today that Long Island doesn’t have a lot of very dangerous wildlife, but there were reports a few years ago about coyotes making their way down through NYC and living in old subways or something, IDK.
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We live near a beautiful pond that during springtime is full of adorable baby ducks and baby bunnies and baby goslings and baby cygnets. There’s one particular bench where if you sit they all just basically parade by you in the water and grass. As we were walking over to it one day there was a mother goose, a daddy goose, and three little goslings swimming in the water a couple yards off shore moving away from us.
We start being all ‘awwww babies!’ and I shit you not in .03 second that goose that was not at all near the shore in the water shot out of it and onto land, which it hit at a run, and nearly knocked my seven year old down. Thankfully it only knocked her a bit with one of its wings and we then grabbed her and moved back.
I still have no idea what its problem was. I can only assume that there might have been another gosling somewhere near us that we never saw, but the family itself wasn’t anywhere near the shore! I have never seen anything with wings move that fast and it was really big up close! And to this day she’s still very untrusting of any nearby geese.
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Our neighborhood pack of coyotes is known for having 1 or 2 that act friendly and try to either lure playful dogs or instigate a chase and then run them over to the pack. And then they’d be doing the super crazy eerie song for hours off and on. It has majorly cut down on the people letting their dogs off leash on the street or roaming unattended (roaming dogs used to be a big thing out here because it was more country culture until it gentrified like whoa) but its hard to hear when people see it happen because usually they’re not used to dealing with wildlife so they don’t know any better.
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I live in an apartment complex that is built around a sizeable artificial pond. So we see a fair amount of waterfowl on a daily basis: we have the ducks who rule the place, the tourist geese, the occasional swan, and even a couple of blue (or possibly gray) heron - the latter are not interested in having humans anywhere close.
Oh, and turtles. A metric fuckton of turtles. If you go out to the pond on any sunny day, you will see turtles stacked on top of each other on branches in the pond, sunning.
But what we also have are snakes. Harmless ones. But one day I’m in the clubhouse, working out, and I stop by the restroom. I go in, am taking care of my business, and this tiny little snake slithers out of the wall. We stare at each other, neither being particularly happy about this chance meeting. It’s a cute little thing, though; about as long as my finger, black, with a very tiny bit of reddish racing stripe on it.
Eventually, I’m in a place where I can move to try and pick the snake up and take it outside - but it was very much on the NO THANK YOU MA’AM side of this, and shot back into its hole in the wall.
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Man, I came in here all excited to tell people about TURKEYS walking DOWN THE ROAD and there are mountain lions and coyotes.
I’m a city Tez.
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@Tez said in WILD ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS:
Man, I came in here all excited to tell people about TURKEYS walking DOWN THE ROAD and there are mountain lions and coyotes.
I’m a city Tez.
Turkeys and geese are fucking terrifying.
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@DrQuinn said in WILD ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS:
We live near a beautiful pond that during springtime is full of adorable baby ducks and baby bunnies and baby goslings and baby cygnets. There’s one particular bench where if you sit they all just basically parade by you in the water and grass. As we were walking over to it one day there was a mother goose, a daddy goose, and three little goslings swimming in the water a couple yards off shore moving away from us.
We start being all ‘awwww babies!’ and I shit you not in .03 second that goose that was not at all near the shore in the water shot out of it and onto land, which it hit at a run, and nearly knocked my seven year old down. Thankfully it only knocked her a bit with one of its wings and we then grabbed her and moved back.
I still have no idea what its problem was. I can only assume that there might have been another gosling somewhere near us that we never saw, but the family itself wasn’t anywhere near the shore! I have never seen anything with wings move that fast and it was really big up close! And to this day she’s still very untrusting of any nearby geese.
Oh man! Your poor kiddo. I have a water fowl story that’s similar.
We went to local preserve to walk around. My kid is three or four at the time. As we’re coasting around the path that borders this pond, a swan starts trailing us in the water. Ooooh. Ahhhh. Majestic swan!!! Eventually it goes back, I don’t think anything of it.
We circle the pond entirely and are back at the beginning. This mofo turns up again, but this time launches out of the water and charges us. I move between my kid and the swan, and I am now hitting it with my jacket. It does not care, because I’m really using zero force as I’m not only afraid of the bird but afraid of hurting it. Like, it’s big but it’s still just a bird and I don’t want to fuck it up.
At this point, a guy who had until this point been standing on a picnic table since our arrival (should have been a clue in hindsight), leaps off it and comes running to our rescue. He has a magazine or something in his hand and he’s like, “RUN, RUN, RUN!!!”
So we run. We don’t look back.
To this day I have no idea if he won or the swan won.
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I live very close to the Everglades and am on a small lake near a golf course, so lots of gator sightings. Like, we stopped doing Easter egg hunts in the backyard after the first year or so
Pelicans and other cool birds hang out in it during winter though.Right now, I have major stress about something apparently LIVING IN MY ATTIC and omfg it’s the worst while they try to figure out WHAT and HOW
she/her, them/they - not super particular
I have been here the whole time
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@Tori said in WILD ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS:
Right now, I have major stress about something apparently LIVING IN MY ATTIC and omfg it’s the worst while they try to figure out WHAT and HOW
Oh man, I want to know what it is!!
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@tsar I am UNSURE I DO haha. I heard it traipsing around overhead in the garage this morning and aaaaaaah. The cats are super confused. I just had a bunch of trees removed so THINGS can no longer pole-dance up to my roof but too late, too late apparently
The animal guy comes back tomorrow. STAY TUNED -
So I’ll give an actual wild encounter instead of implying that my cats are wild(they still are regardless of how lazy they all appear). This was a number of summers ago, at least ten if not 15 years ago if I recall, because I was still a smoker at that time and had just recently separated from the Air Force.
I’m out on the front porch of the house I was at that time living at. It’s in a new housing development area, so not a lot of trees. And I’m sitting there, smoking in the middle of the night. It’s quiet. When I think back, I think I heard some slight rustle, but didn’t really pay attention to it.
What did draw my attention was a sudden shrill shriek, which lasted for maybe a second, if that, before suddenly being cut-off. I’m all ‘wtf’ and doing a scan of the area, when I see in the front yard, the biggest fucking great horned owl standing there, having apparently caught some kind of rodent or other smaller animal. Maybe a rabbit? Too dark to tell. And I just stood there, watching it. Slowly, it does that thing with it’s head where it swivels almost all the way around to stare at me for a good three seconds before taking off to who knows where, whatever meal clenched in it’s claws.
I had no idea great horned owls were so fucking huge. And while I knew that I was many times this owl’s size, there was something supremely predatory in the way it was eyeballing me, as if it were sizing me up and doing a threat assessment.
It was thrilling, impressive, and somewhat terrifying all that once to watch something nature has honed into a expertly crafted hunting machine.
Owls are hardcore.
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My husband and I were on our honeymoon, driving into a national park. We came around the bend and, to our delight, saw up ahead a shadow in the road…with cute little ears! On closer inspection it turned out to be a black bear, which we had both been REALLY wanting to see on our trip.
Usually I’m pretty good about respecting-the-wildlife stuff but he reverses the car and I turn and stare at him and say, “WHY are you BACKING UP?”
He looks back at me and goes, “It’s. A. Fucking. Bear.”
And that’s how I married up.
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One time, when I was about ten years old, we went to get in our above-ground pool, but there was a bat already in there. My mom scooped it out with the net. It was unalive.
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@KarmaBum Bats scare the shit out of me. Not because they’re bats, but more that if you accidentally get bit by one, you’re probably going to have to get six shots(or more) into your stomach on the off-chance that don’t get rabies. Sadly, a lot of bats are carriers of it.
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I don’t know why, but every week or two, a spider will crawl up the back of my laptop and emerge into my view, walking over my screen like it’s trying to be one of those jumpscare GIFs.
This has happened so often that I’m no longer startled by seeing an insect crawling around near me. I have an empty candle jar nearby to scoop them up and toss them out into the wild again. And I always talk to them, too. “Hey little guy, let’s get you back outside.”
Why they love coming up the back of my screen I have no idea, haha.
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@KarmaBum One time I found a freezing little bat in the carport. I put him in a hatbox with a heating pad until he warmed up and left.
I wore heavy leather gloves for this btw.
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I have a hedgehog that plods around in my garden in the evenings. It’s friggin’ adorable.
