The wild animals that live among us

[Wisconsin_Platt]

Lovely Birds.

[teknocholer]

Beautiful plumage.

[Lucy_Gothro1]

I didn’t know where else to post this, really!

Lots of flashing ads, etc.

Angry chickens wreak havoc at McDonald's parking lot drive-thru in New Jersey

[kxkvi]

No word on whether the chickens were angry about McDonald’s plans to roll out new chicken sandwiches.

[Wisconsin_Platt]

The plumage don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.

[Lucy_Gothro1]

My first thought, but I let someone else have a turn, lol.

[kxkvi]

He’s just resting after a long squawk.

[kxkvi]

So now we have 12 (twelve!) deer in the back yard, which isn’t all that big.

My wife counted the ears and divided by two.

[smulder]

@DaakSyde

fisher cats

I wonder why they’re called that, they look more like little bears

[CleverEmi]

No photo, but a couple of skunks were either fighting or fucking (both?) in the yard last night. I can still smell skunk… in the house. The sounds were disturbing, like screaming. All the cats are accounted for and stink free, so it was just the wildlife, gettin’ wild.

Edit, typo.

[chgoliz]

What in the world do you have there in your grass to create such a party??!!

[chgoliz]

I never seem to get good photos, but the one nice thing about living in rural Indiana is the wildlife. I went to the kitchen the other day and found a deer AT THE WINDOW looking in. Hey, dude!

Bear have gotten close, but never this far south. But we do have deer, coyotes, foxes, possoms, muskrats, beavers, raccoons, rabbits, plus all the usual small things like squirrels, chipmunks, and mice. And snakes, frogs, etc. And birds! more than I can possibly identify, but of the migratory waterfowl: sandhill cranes, great blue herons, swans, ducks, loons, grebes, etc.

And in a completely different category, I put the Canada geese. Noisy, poop EVERYWHERE, barely get out of your way when you’re walking because they are not afraid of humans. Ugh. I’m not going to do anything to harm them, but if I discovered a way to convince them our bit of land isn’t worth spending time on, I would happily pay any amount for the knowledge.

[infundibulum]

Spiders? Violets? I dunno, but those are two things I have a lot of.

[DaakSyde]

Despite the name “fisher”, the animal is not known to eat fish [and it’s not a cat]. The name is instead related to the word “fitch”, meaning a European polecat ( Mustela putorius ) or pelt thereof, due to the resemblance to that animal. The name comes from colonial Dutch equivalent fisse or visse . In the French language, the pelt of a polecat is also called fiche or fichet . – Fisher (animal) - Wikipedia

[CleverEmi]

Yesterday morning, I was feeding the cats, and saw a snake. In the house, was a snake. I estimated it was about 3 feet long, about as big around as my thumb, and gray/brown.

Ernie was headed toward it, and not knowing whether it was venomous or not, I put him in the bathroom. I put the other cats in a different room and went back for the snake. The snake was gone. My SO didn’t see it, and asked if it was real.

I looked around several times, checking under stuff, and hoping that it went out the way it came in.

Around 1 am, my dude calls to me, waking me up. Ernie found the snake. We still don’t know if it is possibly dangerous, so all the cats got locked up again.

I’m sure it would have been hilarious to watch us trap the snake in a plastic tote, him and the blanket he was hiding under. We walked him away from the house, not too close to the road, and he slithered off into a big field next door.

After watching it slither away, I think it was more like 4 feet long and about 3/4 to 1 inch in diameter.

Below are two screenshots from the video I took, and a photo that shows the snake as well as it could, given that it was nighttime and all illumination was by flashlight.

After looking online, I think that it was a black rat snake, and he gets to slither another day. Hopefully he is well and truly afraid of people, cats and buildings at this point, and will stay out of our dang house!

Eventful overnight, I’m tired today!

[kxkvi]

I don’t mind snakes but in the house? Gad. You seem so calm about it!

[CleverEmi]

I like snakes, though I don’t know a lot about them, so I am careful any time I don’t know enough to be confident in them being harmless to me.

My SO wanted to kill it, because he’s anti-snake, but I gently steered the situation away from that. And, as we walked out past the shovels, I just didn’t pick one up, so snek would definitely have a chance to get away.

[chgoliz]

Rat snakes are perfectly safe for humans and cats. Thanks for letting him get back to nature, where he belongs!

[Lucy_Gothro1]

Thank you for keeping a natural vermin-killer alive. <3

[Wisconsin_Platt]

American White Pelicans … We’ve been at this campsite a week and haven’t seen these guys until today. And now there must be a hundred on the little lake.