Country Living

This morning I glanced out across our back field. Running hard was a bear trying to get across those many acres of field where the corn has just been harvested. Finally he made it to the woods. We watched him through the binoculars. He looked like maybe two fifty to three hundred pounds, but we were a good distance from him. I love living in the country and watching all the animals. What kind of wildlife do you see where you live.

Now that's really neat!

While we've never actually seen a bear around here (meaning in our neighborhood), we have seen their scat, so we know we have them. We have an abundance of deer, raccoons, foxes, geese, wild turkeys, quail, chipmunks, and squirrels. The smaller animals go through a cycle. As we get more outdoor cats, the chippies, squirrels, and bunnies will die off; then, as the cats die, the smaller animals will come back again and we'll see them playing in the yard. We have groundhogs, too; as long as they stay up by their den at the back of the property, we leave them alone.  

The other night, Rick and I were walking back toward the house from our walk and he stopped. There, down in the field in the front of the soybeans, were two large fawns. So pretty! 

And pretty much every night, there's a huge doe who comes into our lot from the woods. She comes in on our property, then goes over to the neighbors for her dinner. (And then comes to our garden for dessert!  ) She also has two fawns; I don't know, maybe they're the same ones we saw the other night down the road.

I think county living would be nice where you can have horses and a farm but to tell you the truth I would need a store near.I would love the country live ; no traffic etc...

My neighbor's dogs are excellent hunters so we don't have much that will come to either of our yards.  But we see foxes, vultures (lots!), opossums, raccoon and deer in the area.  Oh and plenty of geese!  We get the occasional cougar in the area too; but it's pretty rare anymore.  I'm kind of ok with not having them nearby.  When we visit the in-laws you can hear coyotes at night and there are bears in the area.  My FIL had some coyotes following him when he was out walking their dogs once.  Fortunately they didn't come near them and the dogs are very well trained.  Both of their dogs were big and could probably knock me over if they got over excited while I had them on a leash.  (One has since passed on.  )

There aren't any bears or wolves around here, but way too many deer. They usually stay in the woods and fields outside town, though, unlike the wild boars, foxes, martens, raccoons, ducks and geese. The boars do a lot of damage and are dangerous. Sometimes a whole sounder will waltz down Main Street. :lol3: The martens chew on rubber and wires, so a lot of people curse them when their cars won't start in the morning. We've got one around here who insists on chewing up our windshield wipers. He prefers the wires in our neighbors' car engines, luckily.

I see foxes several times a week when I'm walking to the train station in the early morning. They like to hunt in people's yards.

dejolane said:

I think county living would be nice where you can have horses and a farm but to tell you the truth I would need a store near.I would love the country live ; no traffic etc...

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You wouldn't survive here - nearest 'real' store is 30 miles and if you want more shopping variety, it's 50 miles in the other direction and both are on the busiest highway in the province. Until it got too tough to combine (too damp to cut and thresh grain), traffic past my house consisted of a few combines, some swathers and a few semis every day, down both roads. I make one trip a week for grub but in winter, I have to bring in enough to last me and the cats up to 6 weeks and I get enough hay for the horse for the whole year in the fall.

We mostly have rats with antlers, coyotes, jack rabbits, the odd wolf and cougar. Right now, it is blackbirds and grackles that are determined to eat everything in sight before they head south - they should STAY south, vile, dirty noisy things.

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We've seen deer, rabbits - I know there are bears around but fortunately we have not yet met one!

I live in suburbia.  We do back up to wetland woods.

In our yard we have deer (which are more like really big dogs, they don't run when you yell) foxes, opossums, raccoons, coyote (someone saw one near our house) bears, and bunnies.

The deer and bunnies annoy me.  Deer ate tomato plants (and we have all kinds of foliage they could eat).  Had to surround them with chicken wire.  Bunnies ate all of my beans (again, we have GRASS to eat).

Funny story about the bear.  It was spotted at the high school.  The mascot for the high school is the Grizzlies.  LOL.  Maybe it wanted to hang out with our principal- who at the time was called "Mama Grizz"

Cheryl

I've seen foxes, wild turkeys, deer, rabbits and I know there are coyotes around here too but I have never seen one. I would not like to see a bear.

I could do without the wild animals if I lived there but I need a store. I live in a apartment that is connected to 3 others. I don't have a major store near us just a little town.

Family Dollar,po box ,1 gas station, pharmacy,  hardware store,and 1 bank. That's it. and don't forget the small meat shop near by.

we live rightt on the edge of Riverside. we have a lot of Owls. and i've seen Foxes, Coyotes, Skunks, Rattlesnakes and lots of Racoons. every once in a while there's report of a Bobcat but i never seen one personally

No cougars here, but there have been Bobcat sitings. NJ had a reintroduction program back in the 1980s, and apparently it was more successful than they thought. They weren't catching many on the cameras they had set up further north, but there have been a number of sightings reported locally this past year.

We're pretty rural. There is a gas station with a store and a nice deli with good homemade food in "town," about 10 minutes drive from here. The town identified by our postal code is only about 20 minutes away, and there is a supermarket there, and a pharmacy! Otherwise, 30 minutes to 45 minutes is pretty much an expected drive for us. :lol3:

We have an overload of deer. We also can't put out suet for birds, or it attracts the bears. In fact, in fall and winter, we can't put out hanging bird feeders with seed and berries; just the small one we have stuck on the window. Bears have broken two poles we had up. We had an approximately 350 pound female with two cubs living on our property when we were in the house. I posted a picture of the two cubs here when they were right outside our living room window eating the bird seed there. We ended up making an agreement with the garbagemen - we simply couldn't put the garbage can out for them to pick up, she kept dragging it up the hill and we had to keep buying new garbage cans. One of them saw her one morning, and that was when they agreed to honk as they were coming up the road (we lived alone on a long dead-end road) so we could bring the garbage out when they were there. :lol3:

Because of the ferals, there are really only flying birds and groundhogs around the house. Rabbits & chipmunks live up the (internal to the RV park) road. Smokey (one of the ferals) made friends with a baby ground hog this spring. Didn't have the camera to take pictures, but they were actually playing with each other!

We have HEAPS of raccoons, skunks, and opossums. There are herds of deer and turkey.

I thankfully rarely see crows here; the red winged blackbirds migrated through but (again thankfully) didn't stay. I'm also really glad we don't have grackles. We do have quite a few vultures, hawks and owls. The bluebirds were back this year! I've seen fox, but they seem to stay in the woods.

I also haven't seen and don't hear coyotes, but I know they're here as people hunt them. I always wonder about the ferals we've TNR'd that we stop seeing. :heart2: I think some must be prey for coyote.

And thank GOODNESS there are no wild boar here. I can't imagine....

We have deer, wild turkeys, foxes, coyotes, and bobcats too. I don't go outside after dark here in my yard because we are surrounded by crops on three sides.:lol3:

That's really cool!

We have deer, coyote, foxes, etc. We do have marshes around here and had a great blue heron in one of our trees not that long ago:

How beautiful. We have heron sometimes that come to our pond in the back yard. Of course they are fishing.:lol3:

I love to see wild life.The only thing we see around here is some deer every now & then.

I live in the city, so the most "wild" I see are squirrels and the occasional bunny.

I would love to be able to look out my window and see deer, bear, or even large cats.  But the drawback there is that you have to live in a rural area, and I'm too much of a city girl to move to a rural area. I absolutely love the city and live in the heart of downtown: lights, noise, people.... I love it.

Natalie_ca - used to be a time the bears would wander in along the river bank and deer really know no boundaries and show up in many cities. You do NOT want to see a cat larger than a bobcat - I've seen cougars too close for comfort, like a couple of hundred feet.

yes be careful They are nice to look at  but do not wanna get too close. Take pics.