Wild Times - They Live Among Us

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ocdart

ocdart

Inland Mopars Car Club
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I'm not sure what you thought you might see with this thread title, but I'm pretty sure what you'll find isn't what you thought.
We live in a well-established 30+ year old neighborhood in north Orange County, SoCal. It hasn't been any sort of "wild" around here for years.
But about 3:00AM Sunday morning I'm awakened by the sound of our dogs rushing out our bedroom sliding glass door (we leave the screen open enough for the dogs to go outside should they need to during the night) and then both my wife and I are jolted fully awake by the sound of loud growling and hissing that is definitely not coming from either our Rhodesian Ridgeback or our Siberian Husky. Then some barking from the Ridgeback - and if you know Ridgebacks, you know they very rarely bark.
Both of us jump out of bed, rush over to the open door and hit the outside light switch. There on the other side of the pool is a big ol' mama raccoon and she is not happy with either of our dogs. Our Ridgeback was holding back a bit but our Husky just rushed right in and I'm surprised neighbor back yard lights didn't all go on due to the loud ruckus and commotion.
We finally got the dogs back in the house and mama 'coon still wasn't happy. What we hadn't seen earlier was that she had a baby with her that had somehow fallen into the pool and was paddling over to the side. She got the baby out and both went over the wall and into one of our neighbors trees. We checked our Husky from head to tail and didn't find any sign she'd been bitten - I don't think you can penetrate that thick fur anyway.
Luckily we didn't have another late night/early morning visit last night.
Over the years we've had our share of visits from opossums and the rare sight of a coyote now and then, but this is the first raccoon I've seen in over 30 years in our home. We also have occassional visits from ducks stopping for a brief rest in the pool. It's funny when they hit the water because they don't have much room to maneuver around neighbor's backyard trees on their approach to the pool - it's sort of a controlled crash when they land. Needless to say the dogs think they have new 'swim toys' but neither of them will go in the water after the ducks.
Just the "wilds" of Orange County - who needs to go to the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland - LOL
 
the pressure from urban sprawl , here in Victoria we have a large deer population in the city and had one get hit by a car on the main street in front of City Hall during the Victoria Day parade ,there's no park or woodlands within 20 blocks of that location , it had to be put down in front of the crowd .
 
I here ya,we have coonsssssssssssss also,just last year my back nabiour was looking down his chimmy and BAM one pops out he has the hell scared out of him and fell of the roof,I heard the whole thing wile working on the Dart,he hit his head and is not all there now,too bad he was a decent guy.I tyryed to trap that bugger but out smarted me every time.
 
We have all the wild life where I live on the edge of the city. It is nice to catch a look at a red fox and the deer that cross the property.
 
OCDART, I live in Cypress. I have had a pair of huge raccoons in our neighborhood for the 10 years that I have lived at my present location. They don't show up all of the time, just sometimes. I have fruit trees and they will come and eat the oranges that have fallen on the ground. Sometimes they have a young one in tow. I guess they can be pretty mean critters because they don't seem to be afraid of any of the dogs around us. We also get the opposums.

Previous to this house, I lived in another part of Cypress which was near the Los Alamitos Race Track. We would get ducks in our pool, bats flying around, and barn owls out hunting. There was a lot of open land around the track back then.
 
Hey OC

I live just a couple of blocks from ya and we have a few that come in to our yard every once in a while, I think they come over from the Santa Ana river bed. My little toy poodle will tree them and ill have to go out and get her because she aint smart enough to leave em alone.Im just glad that they dont come down out of the tree because our poodles bark is way worse then its bite.

Bob
 
speaking of raccoon--- just this spring -- our dog- food container was emptying quite quickly. this is stored in our 1 car garage next to the back door. I was reading FABO late one night & heard a noise from that direction-- went out/ turned on the lights & wow-- a full family of 5 of them were chowing down on the dry dog food. 3 young'ens & the 2 adults--- the adults took off & the youngsters froze, I guess I couldn't see them if they didn't move. I took a ball bat & hit the bench a couple of times & they cleared out.. My garage is now tightly closed when night falls now!!
Lawrence
 
Oregon gets that all the time. I live in San Diego now and the only thing I've run across are cayotes. I just wouldn't let kids out after dark in Carmel Mountain where I live. They aren't TOO aggressive. I went out on the back patio to smoke on a drinking night to meet about 8 of them that seemed pretty interested in me. I was drunk, so my BRILLIANT solution was to get mad at them when they started hopping up on the half wall of my pation. They ran just like most other animals when my VERY INTELLIGENT self went running up the hill after them.... screaming. Lucky they weren't hungry enough to not care about their own well-being, so no rabies for me.

Then I went back inside and my intelligent half yelled at me. God bless her.
 
Racoons are all over the place here. My wife's cat ignores them now and will even sit next to them and eat. We have all sorts of wildlife here, a state park borders our neighborhood so you name it, we got it. Deer, turkey and about every kind of varmint the state of Ohio has, will come into the yard.
Oh, don't want to forget the neighbors peacocks! Those suckers come a strutt'n and boy are they loud! They get up on the roof and scare the bejesus out of you.
 
That was a great story. We have lots of wildlife here too and I am miles from any woods. The coons live in the storm sewer. You can catch them crawling in and out at night. If you go for a walk after sunset you need to carry a flashlight or maybe a club. LOL We also have opossum, squirrels, rabbits, owls, hawks, and occasional deer and I live in the middle of town. There have been black bear and moose sightings north of town and we are 90 miles from the Mississippi river and 120 miles from Minnesota to our north. tmm
 
on another note-- Wichita has a nice park on the west side (fishing/tennis/playground/cookout type stuff)-- my family & I were driving through Sunday night -- going to let my dog run a bit. I saw 6 skunks all in pairs of 2 within the last 1/3 of the park. Needless to say we didn't stop. It was the strangest thing, people biking/jogging playing on the playground stuff on the east side of the road, the skunks with in 75 feet on the west side.
Lawrence

yes they were skunks!!
 
Just a word of caution, I live in deep woods so I see the critters alla time,...Almost lost my dog when I was a kid cause of a Raccoon. My two lab mixes got one In a pond one afternoon, got cut to ribbons,lotsa stitches...vet said the only reason they survived was because It was 2 dogs against one raccoon, a racoon in the water will slice open a dogs belly in a second, they're much more agile in the water than a dog, and I guess I don't have to tell ya about wild critters and their babies,...
 
We're having reports of a mountain lion around here, several sightings in the country near by, and one on a bigger street in town.Has people watching there pets and children closer.
 
I am in an older neighborhood built in the late 60"s, maybe 500 feet from a major highway. We have seen racoons (with babies), rabbits and one night my Australian sheppard was going crazy and there was a possum in the wood pile. Now coyotes are in the news......Lots of smaller dogs and cats come up missing...life in the big city!
 
A friend of mine, took this picture through her kitchen window. About 30 mile East of Springfield, Mo.
 

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I am working in Pittsburg, PA and a bear cub visited the Sears at a mall here in town last week, it was on the news a couple different nights.
 
Two racoons in my backyard last summer.

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ocdart said:
I'm not sure what you thought you might see with this thread title, but I'm pretty sure what you'll find isn't what you thought.
We live in a well-established 30+ year old neighborhood in north Orange County, SoCal. It hasn't been any sort of "wild" around here for years.
But about 3:00AM Sunday morning I'm awakened by the sound of our dogs rushing out our bedroom sliding glass door (we leave the screen open enough for the dogs to go outside should they need to during the night) and then both my wife and I are jolted fully awake by the sound of loud growling and hissing that is definitely not coming from either our Rhodesian Ridgeback or our Siberian Husky.
Click to expand...

Yeah, we had similar excitement on occasion when we lived in North O.C. (City of Orange). Possums in the garage caused a big stink. Drove them down the 91 a ways..... Ducks in the pool - once maybe. Mostly it was they coyotes. They would roam on the Santa Ana river bottom, then come into the neighborhoods. I was only a few blocks off Glassell and the 91, so we got hit quite a bit. Lost a cat........

All that stuff was no big deal though. Really miss the place.
 
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