Now it’s wolverines. Those fellows are certifiable if surprised—they’re sort of the North American version of the Tasmanian Devil, only larger, so I’d be real cautious going out to the woodpile in the dark without advertising my presence. But I’m happy to see another species pop up in its old range. You start putting the pieces back in a disturbed nature, and all sorts of critters may like it. I remember when the egrets came back to Oklahoma City: and kept coming; and kept coming. Now they have egret mitigation in certain places—they tried it on the lake I lived on—but I voted for the egrets, and so did the majority of the residents.
good news on the nature front…
by CJ | Dec 16, 2010 | Journal | 28 comments
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I just watched a PBS special about wolverines a couple weeks ago. What a cool little animal. It’s a good sign if they are seen out and about considering people thought they were nearly extinct for a while there.
I’m all for reintroduction of wolves and bears.Black Bears have made a major come back in oklahoma this last decade,so much they opened a limited cull season for them this year. Mountain Lions are making a major come back also,which is great in my book. I want wolves and grizzly’s to return also, put some wild back in oklahoma lol.
I recall a vignette where the BEMS were scouting out the Earth preparatory to conquest, starting somewhere in the Mountain West. The first critter they evaluated was a grizzly and they were quite impressed with its strength and fierceness. A wolverine then proceeded to hijack the bear’s salmon which the bear allowed because it knew that it could win the battle but would take major damage from the wolverine by the time it was dead or disabled. Extremely impressed! Finally the wolverine visits a human who has partially tamed it. The BEMS cross the Earth off their list and bug out making sure to leave no traces. LOL – forget the author but reminiscent of Gordon Dickinson.
😆 that’s a new one on me, but Gordie could’ve!
I remember this story, too; although, I can’t recall the author, either. Christopher Anvil? Charles De Vet? I am almost certain that it first appeared in ‘Astoundalog’ sometime late during the tenure of John W. Campbell as editor.
It looks as though there’s an accidental unclosed link tag in the blog post. 🙂 Just sayin’.
Even in a big city, we have some very hardy and clever “woodland” critters. Aside from the “gangsta” squirrels (brazen!), you’ll find occasional raccoons and oppossums, and likely more exotic beings. The rumored “alligators / crocodiles in the sewer” are not entirely rumor: we have bayous.
Hah, having a hissy fit because, wonder of wonders, actual wildlife visit where you’ve cleared land *they* lived on to start with…species arrogance and chauvinism, and not a little lack of respect for the balance of nature, live and let live, or the enjoyment. Yes, you or your offspring might have to face a wild, possibly dangerous critter. So do they, when they face you and your offspring. 😉 If they’re not threatened, harassed, pampered, or their young or home turf are not put in danger, chances are, they will leave people alone if the people leave them alone. Curiosity? Sure. Seeking a quick meal? Yes. We’d get a bit upset if someone trespassed in our home, our pantry, or got too close to our loved ones, so how can it be a shock that animals would do the same?
I like peace with my neighbors and with any animals around. However, I have evicted a pair of raccoons who wanted to live in my attic before: You guys wanna live here, you gotta pay rent. No wild parties, making lots of noise at dark-thirty. 🙂 — I was happy for them to live — elsewhere than in my attic. Unless they planned to wash dishes and do home repairs or some such. 😉
I have no trouble with folks hunting, if they do it for food and not “sport” and don’t overdo it. (No problem either if I wanted to hunt, but accurate marksmanship would be…problematic, LOL.) When a woman, complete stranger, bragged in line about how many tens (hundreds?) of pounds of fish she and her party had caught on an arranged trip, I withheld comment. All I could think was, “If you all caught that much, how much was left in the lake?” Shamefully irresponsible, I thought.
I am “inside the loop” in my city. I did not know how profound a change that is, in terms of not seeing growing things outside of a flowerbed or park, which has not much relation to real countryside. I miss that, sometimes as a palpable yearning. I grew up on the edge of the city limits, and my parents and I always went out over the spring and summer to do mild hiking and nature watching. (Always with cameras and sketchpads in tow. There is photographic evidence of a certain lady artist in seemingly compromising poses to take photos of flowers in a ditch, deer or other wildlife, and even a couple of roadrunners who, it turned out on closer examination, were having a rather private moment….) Hey, my mom and photo albums for clouds / skies alone. I would not trade those memories for anything.
It seems to me that if we are to survive as a species, off-planet or on, not only must we learn to get along with our own species, but the others with whom we share this little oasis.
How we, as a “civilized” and “modern” technologically and industrially advanced society somehow forgot that, in our rise through industrialization, I can’t fathom. I know, even prehistoric cultures drastically altered their environments, but that was (usually) apparently unintentional / unplanned. Or so I would like to think. But if we don’t find a way to co-exist… some other species will “inherit the earth” and perhaps the stars.
There, so much for windmill tilting today. 😉
Hah, even my gentrified housecats would love to catch a bird. Not that they’d know at first what to do about it, but they’d still like the chance; and it seems a good thing if the chance remains available, even though they get plenty from their human staffer.
Nah, I inspected it and all the tags are formed right. The /a tag just encompasses each of the paragraphs completely instead of just the first sentence or whatnot. (slow day at work…sigh)
Lately we’ve had some big cats come down from MN and Wis into the IL suburbs. Of course the response of animal control and police has been to shoot them dead even though a tranquilizer would do the trick and it isn’t like we don’t have zoo experts in the area who could give advice. *sigh* They filled one so full of bullets I’m pretty sure they were enjoying themselves instead of doing the “humane” thing. Larger animals have started to extend their territory in order to find mates and since there are not a lot of other predators around here they find plenty of food to eat while they go about their business be it in the countryside or in the city. Killing one won’t change that pattern. It will always be a “they were here first” situation because they were even if their territories do fluctuate from time to time. Mom doesn’t let the dog out alone because they have turkey vultures near their house. She hasn’t once mentioned killing the vultures. They live a couple blocks from a river. Their house is in the bird’s habitat. You adapt.
http://www.krem.com/news/Spokane-ranked-15th-most-secure-city-112011644.html
And we just got voted 15th most secure city of our size in the country—which you wouldn’t think by our crime reports: I live equidistant from 3, count ’em, 3 domestic violence-cum-relatives and hangers-on houses, which nightly figure in the police reports for assault, drugs, garage burglary, vehicle theft,—how you can do that semi-weekly at the same house is a puzzlement, but hey, one topped that with several assault charges….
So these rural mothers are worried about the big bad wolf at the bus stop? A bear in the hospital parking lot? My own species worries me more. 😉
On the other hand, they do function as magnets for all evil in the area, so you don’t get much action except on their lawns.
I wonder if we could convince the hospital district bear or the bus stop wolf pack to visit these little nests of inquity. I’d pay their cab fare.
I have been following Dr Lyn Rogers and his black bear research, after seeing a film about him and them on the BBC, he actually has a facebook page – Lily the black bear, which started with a den cam, and the birth of her first cub, Hope. They have a bit of a problem with hunters though – they occasionally shoot radio collared research bears, even though bright ribbons are tied to the collars, and there are notices asking that the hunters don’t shoot them (there is a 6 weeks hunting season) making it illegal to shoot collared bears is apparently problematic for the local authorities ….
I thought wolverines were extinct too ….
gamekeepers in this country still kill predators, even protected ones. 100 years ago they killed finches and other birds that ate the corn they put out for the pheasants. just so a few rich guys can go out and shoot hundreds of game birds ….
On the ancestral homestead in OH (and my grandparents’ farm in southern OH), the deer are quite brazen. Small herds completely destroy any flowers my mom tries to plant, and the shrubs around the house are nibbled such that they never need trimming. For the first time ever, my folks allowed a bowhunter to set up a stand in the woods nearby, in the hopes it would convince the deer to let the humans have a little space too. We have seen foxes, rabbits, raccoons, skunks, mondo squirrels both red and gray, a plethora of birds from red-tailed hawks down to finches and jays, and the ubiquitous groundhogs.
Out here in the islands, there isn’t really a question of native species. The land dwelling ones are mostly human imports, and the sea dwelling ones have first preference anyway. I’m not going to contest right of way with a shark.
I worked with hand raised wolves for two years in graduate school in the late 70’s when talk first started of reintroducing them into Yellowstone. I think I would be a lot more afraid of scaring up a wolverine than meeting up with a wild wolf. They really tend to avoid human contact if possible and I think it would normally hard to corner one – unlike finding something resting in the woodpile.
For years the state DNR has disputed reports of mountain lions in our area (central Indiana). Last summer one of their cameras was tripped by a puma and voila, now there are some. The fear would be of someone killing them over “destructive behavior” when it was really just a chance for a trophy. Not that the potential for livestock and small pet danger is not there, but our coyote population pretty well takes care of that already.
Don’t get me started on wolf/dog hybrids and how “nice” they are if given the chance. Not near my kids thanks.
Out here on the coast 200 miles from ANYTHING we deal with wildlife on a daily basis. I am literally a leisurely 10 minute walk (if I follow the roads and don’t cut through anyone’s yard) from the police station/fire station/town hall in what passes for an urban area here. Of course, a 5 minute drive means one is out in cow country, and another 10 minutes means total wilderness. The next TOWN (half the size of ours, if that) is either half an hour up or down the coast, or an hour inland. Mountain lions (since the hunting laws changed) are a serious issue in some areas around here, parents won’t send small children to the bus stop, they’ll drive them down to the road and wait in the car until the bus comes. They’ve been found living in several down-town city parks! Bears are common, people learn how to deal or spend a lot of time cleaning up trash. They’ve even been known to wander through the yard here. My roses and half my bonsai trees live in cages. Its a lot easier to cage them than keep the deer away, let me tell you! Most gardeners in the area have learned what plants are deer proof, deer resistant, or deer candy, and plant accordingly.
My current battle is with a skunk that’s apparently either sprayed the barn cat or trying to move in with it… what fun.
I agree with CJ that humans are far more scary than most critters. A predator is a predator..you learn to keep away from them. The difference is, the human one is more likely to stalk you than to run off or hide when he (or she) hears you coming!
We have urban skunks, woodchucks and rabbits (one rabbit lived in the churchyard at the end of my street, but I haven’t seen it for a while). Deer have been seen in the city, too, as well as the occasional coyote. There are turkey vultures and Canada geese, too. Falcons nest on a ledge at city hall (there’s a camera so you can peek).
When it comes to the suburbs, I don’t understand why people move out to these semi-rural areas in search of “nature” and then get upset when nature pops up in their backyard.
Here in the ‘burbs north of Dallas (Texas) the main wildlife are rabbits, skunks, squirrels, raccoons, possums, coyotes, and the occasional bobcat. I know several folks who have lost small dogs to coyotes and one friend who photographed a bobcat in his backyard(!). There were wolves in this area in living memory, but they seem to be long gone.
I have seen one beaver dam on a local creek, and one small, local lake had an alligator a few years ago. We are on the ragged edge for the northernmost part of ‘gator range, but it is not clear if this one arrived naturally or as an escaped ‘pet’.
How’s the armadillo population? When I was a child in Oklahoma, they were very common in southern Oklahoma, and every child played with horned toads. Now the horned toads have vanished, and they blame human encroachment, but the weather’s changed for wetter, and that’s my suspect: kids and horned toads were getting along right well from before statehood, we always let them go back to the garden, and now they just don’t appear. Neither did armadillos, past the 1950’s. But the egrets came back in huge numbers. And I’ve heard nothing of the various -mundis, which used to pop across the border from Mexico.
I think the Oklahoma-Texas-New Mexico wildlife line is one real good way to track microbumps in the climate…and Oklahoma is a great experiment in terraforming. I lived through a major drought in the 1940’s, really, really bad, following, of course, the Dustbowl, in my parents’ time. But following that, federal government urging (provoking a lot of shotgun-waving riots and talk of it’s-my-right-to-plow-how-I-want) to contour farming and the offer of the state government to build farm ponds to sweeten the deal, and Oklahoma now has more shoreline than Minnesota—quite the sight to fly over at sunset, as thousands and thousands of ponds catch the light, a few acres apart. It’s changed the rainfall pattern, some think—because Oklahoma is now troubled with flooding: rain dumps bigtime on the state.
But since the settlers had cleared the Cross Timbers (Texas/Oklahoma thicket, impenetrable stuff) and burned the land off and killed the buffalo grass in Oklahoma, and then pumped the land dry, I’m sure I’d be interested in what geology knows of the climate before the settlers intervened. My granddad, who as a boy was a cowboy in presettlement Oklahoma, told me stories of big storms.
So having watched the wildlife change, I just kind of wonder what the wildlife was over time, and I’m sure those answers are starting to come—but now I’m up here and not plugged into that info any more.
Armadillos don;t flourish in the suburbs because they are destructive of the nice lawns. Judging by the roadkill, they are doing fine in the more rural areas.
Like you, I can remember playing with horned toads as a kid. (We would seem to be about the same age.) I haven’t seen a live horny toad since I was a kid. 🙁
I grew up in the Mojave Desert of Southern California. Horny toads were pretty common. Now I live in Northern Arizona – Ponderosa Pine forest- and still run across one or two in the yard every year. I think the common denominator is that both locations are fairly arid.
Wolves are shy enough that they aren’t usually a problem except for ranches and rangeland snuggled up against the deep woods. We had a den of coyotes in our bottomland and they used to sing back to the siren at the volunteer fire station. LOL. The sound they make when they are running down some poor creature in the middle of the night will make your blood run cold, sort of like puppies at dinnertime mixed with malevolent purpose. We’ve lost ewes, lambs and small calves to them over the years and we relied on the government trapper to help limit those losses. The county paid for the trapping program and one year we had a county commissioner say in public that there were good coyotes and bad coyotes and we only wanted to get rid of the bad ones. In my experience, the good coyotes simply had lacked the opportunity to be bad. The big problem with coyotes is that they aren’t shy and can live inside even big cities and will hunt anything that they can run down, kill and chew.
Timely news. Coyote rescued from floating ice on Lake Michigan. The are allowed in the city limits in order to get rid of pests I guess.
Heh.
Best keep close tabs on Kitteh or Bowser. I have watched coyotes entrap dogs and kill them–they position an in-heat female coyote upwind of the target and let him get to thinking he has a chance to further the species’ development. She keeps just out of reach until Hopeful Doggie gets to the treeline, then scratch one doggie.
* I infer the coyote was in heat because it definitely was a female and I cannot imagine what else would motivate a domestic dog to go out there…
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And the tales are legion of coyotes coming into yards to pick off dogs. In one case, my sister in law in Reno basically forced her little dog to go out into the back yard, as it was about bedtime and he had a history of poor bladdder control overnight. He didn’t want to go; she insisted. About 30 seconds later she saw a coyote jump the back fence with Wallie in his mouth. She was a while getting over that one.
In our corner of Southeastern Arizona, outdoor kittehs and diminutive canines are know as “Coyote Chow”
We get horny toad here too in the ponderosa forest — and I also can remember playing with them in northern New Mexico as a kid! Small world moment.
Same here in Central Arizona when it comes to coyotes — the kittehs are always indoors! But a bigger problem we have with wildlife here and ready4more will have too I bet are javelinas — we had six of them in our driveway a couple of days ago, from 3 to 10 feet away from my husband as he calmly worked on the truck. And while I realize their eyesight is lousy, their sense of smell is very good and they were totally unconcerned about his presence. These beasites have been known to attack people to get to their lapdogs and will savage a dog at any opportunity. I’ve heard of them breaking thru fences if they can to get to dogs. One co-worker was walking with their 7 year-old daughter in their neighborhood with their two dogs one afternoon and 6 or 7 javelinas attacked one of the dogs, resulting in 87 stitches and two drains; that poor dog [pointer size] had almost been gutted, almost all the damage was to the groin area. Jen said it was just dumb luck that the javelinas [who do have tusks] missed both the rectum and the urethra. Nasty beasties.
The most worrisome part though is all the idiots in my neighborhood who feed the wildlife — like the javelina. I’ve heard stories of folk deliberately giving out scraps, and putting out ‘bird seed’ [cracked corn on platforms] for birds, but you just know it’s for the elk, along with salt and mineral licks and water tubs. Which means all the wildlife is totaly unconcerned about people and then folk wig out over the bear trying to get into the kitchen. We had one bear already shot by Game and Fish because it charged the guys who were trying to tranquilize it. Elk are very common, and I’ve seen bear scat everytime I’ve walked the perimeter ofour [small] subdivision and one guy from Game and Fish told me that lion are very common in the vicinty, although I’ve never seen one yet. I have seen bobcat scampering thru the neighborhood at 10 am, we had a skunk last spring try to explore the garage and I’ve seen some big raccoons waddle across the patio; all of which can harbor rabies. Scary, because we had a big rabies outbreak a few years back with several people being attackes by rabid bobcats. So our kittehs all have all their shots, but I still won’t let them out.
Bear scat, oh yeah.
You’ve heard the story, right?
If you’re in an area where they have both black and grizzly bears, you are supposed to wear bear bells on your shoes so they hear you coming, and carry pepper spray in case a bear charges you. You can tell the black bear scat from the grizzly scat: black bear scat has berry seeds in it; grizzly scat has bear bells in it and smells of pepper spray.
Lol!
We have more deer in our area now than at any other time, including pre European settlers. One reason is that we have no major predators in the area. The other is The Bambi Effect or as Garrison Keillor put it “Cute, furry animals with big wet eyes.” And no, they are not cute when they knock down dwarf fruit trees.
We have had a return of coyotes and fishercats, which are about as much like cats as my dog. What is *really* eerie is hearing them in the woods at night. No wonder people believed in the wendigo.
Javelinas… Our Baskin Robbins Ice Cream parlor sits on a lot where a dry wash runs through one corner (in the middle of town just off the busiest intersection). New hires that are not working out too well are sent to empty the empty ice cream tubs into the dumpster right next to the wash at the end of the day – usually pitch black. The javelinas have a love of the dairy products and have learned to come into town travelling down this wash and out to the dumpster. They attempt to scare humans into dropping their favorite dessert. Needless to say, the poor performing new employees don’t get warned ahead of time, and consequently although the store has a high turnover in new employees, they all quit rather than being fired, saving the employers a lot of unemployment taxes.
ROTFLMAO.
Like Jane’s black lab, who had a wicked habit of approaching a tiny child with an ice cream cone and going WOOF!
Splat!
Happy dog.