Something's roaming about the neighborhood

BBDOLL22 said:

One night we had all the windows open and window fans drawing cool air into the house.
Hubby and I heard a noise, best way to describe it is a cat and Donald Duck fighting. Well I turned on porch light , opened the door.... Then screamed to hubby shut the windows turn off the fans. Too late our whole house smelled of skunk. It smelled for hours.

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  Oh that's awful!!

A few years ago my DH bought me a small telescope for my birthday and we took it with us when we were going to visit my family.  We were in my Grandparent's backyard; in a typical 1950's suburb, checking out the moon when DH told my Grandpa and I to go inside.  Sure enough; there was a big ol skunk walking through the yard!  That skunk never paid any attention to us!  Thank the Lord!  He sniffed around the trash cans for a few minutes and then went on his way and I was able to go get my telescope.  Or maybe I sent DH out for it.  I don't remember after that. 

My FIL had an incident with a skunk in their backyard and he got their 2 dogs. FIL had to put the dogs inside while he tried to get the skunk out one of the gates.  It then went into the carport...

Our dog was at the front door growling yesterday morning. DH said it's probably a cat again. He put the leash on the dog to go out. I heard the door close and then almost immediately open again. It wasn't a cat but an armadillo digging for grubs. DH brought the dog in until the armadillo was done and went clanking on its' way.

An armadillo! Now that's something we would not see around here! 

Gosh, I would be thrilled with an armadillo around.  

DH actually called me to the back porch Saturday night because he heard loud noises in the woods.  If DH is concerned about it, there must be something big out there.  I didn't hear the noises, but he thought it might be a bobcat or something even larger.  It could have been a bear, unlikely but not unheard of, in our area.  And I have no idea what type of noises they make.  

I think other than when two males are fighting bears don't make much noise.  Usually just low grunting noises which makes them scarier.  I remember when that man and his girlfriend were killed up in Alaska I seen an interview with one of the very few people who listened to the tape of the attack.  He said that was the scariest part of it there were only a few of the low grunting sounds, no snarling or growling.

I heard baby bear squalling when s/he was little. Mama didn't make much noise, but when she did, I paid attention and came back inside.

Yeah those babies are so cute and cuddly looking but mama is somewhere close.  Like any other mammal, if mama feels that baby is threatened she is going to get real angry real fast.

Denice said:

 
Yeah those babies are so cute and cuddly looking but mama is somewhere close.  Like any other mammal, if mama feels that baby is threatened she is going to get real angry real fast.

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I never get close to babies, even raccoons, when mama is around. The ladies do enough ripping of my flesh - most of the time accidentally.

I know we have bobcats around here; we've seen them.

The big issue here in PA in the mountain lion. Are they here or aren't they? A lot of "experts" feel that the lion hasn't been around in PA since the late 1800s. Yet it's been seen. I saw one....at least, I'm convinced it was a mountain lion. One night I was coming home from work at 11:00. Had the car turned to come up the driveway....and I stopped dead. There it was, at the top of the driveway. Biggest "house cat" I ever saw! It turned and loped out of the driveway and into the side yard. I saw its tail and that's what made me think it had to be a mountain lion, not a bobcat. And no spots; bobcats have spots and bobcats don't have much of a tail at all. I drove up the driveway and went into the house and told Rick about it. He showed me a picture of a mountain lion and I swear to this day that that is what I saw. It wasn't a bobcat; it was a mountain lion. I don't care what the experts say. That's what it was.

Not too long after that, we were outside and one of our neighbors came over and asked us to come over to his yard. Pawprint. Cat pawprint. BIG cat pawprint. We don't know what kind of cat it was, but it was not a house cat. 

MargeCat said:

 
WARNING: the following link contains poop pix! 

http://www.bear-tracker.com/bobcatscat.html

T.M.I., IMHO!

For your reading...uh..pleasure.

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What an interesting site! FWIW, the scat in the pictures doesn't match what I saw. There were berries and seeds and such in this poop on the step. Makes me think more of a bear than a cat as a cat is more of a carnivore, whereas the bear likes berries and such. 

But that is one neat site!

Berries and seeds are also in raccoon scat. Bears usually leave a fairly large pile of scat, whereas a raccoon will leave two or three smaller pieces. I have seen a lot of bear and raccoon scat, and would bet on raccoon.

I remember many many years ago when I was growing up in a very rural area in Eastern Kansas it was said that there were no mountain lions anywhere close.  For several months we heard an animal sound that we hadn't heard before.  Someone in the area who spent several years in the Rocky Mountains where there were mountain lions said that that was what it sounded like.  Of course it is possible that someone was keeping one in captivity and kept quite about it so there wouldn't be issues with the neighbors.

Winchester said:

 
What an interesting site! FWIW, the scat in the pictures doesn't match what I saw. There were berries and seeds and such in this poop on the step. Makes me think more of a bear than a cat as a cat is more of a carnivore, whereas the bear likes berries and such. 

But that is one neat site!

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I've seen berries in seeds in poop before and it was skunk.  We have run into the skunk twice while we were out by our campfire at the side of the yard. Both times he wasn't anymore than 3 feet away from us. We both just froze both times and he just sauntered like "he owned the joint", which he of course for the moment did! Lol. We heard growling and snarling last night. Just some racoons though, fighting  over the left over bird and a few shelled peanuts on the ground. 

Wow, I would have love to see the Mountain Lion, (from a safe distance of course). Cool!!

Well, we found five piles of scat (this looks like regular cat scat) behind the house yesterday. From outdoor housecats, although I'm still not amused by it. We are using the dirt from digging for the shed at the back of the house to increase the grade level in that area. I was removing the stones from there and found it. It's a mess. I'd been hearing Muffin crying and snorting in one of the back windows and evidently, that's why....another cat outside. We'll have to try to trap it....I don't want cat dirt all over the area there and it looks like he or she has gotten quite used to using that spot as a bathroom. And now that we have large piles of dirt there from digging out around the shed area, I told Rick that will be an open invitation for the cat to continue using the site until we can get it spread out and seeded. The cat even pooped inside the tiki bar, on the ground, but inside the bar. And it pooped on the tarp covering the lawnmower. I'm not dealing with it.