…and this is a 
This is not a very good picture, but it's because the subject is very, very shy. We have a, shall we say, rather untamed yard, very weedy, and we keep finding new little pals moving in. We've got rabbits everywhere, and lately, to our annoyance, pocket gophers are burrowing in our front yard, and we've been reluctant to murder them despite the gopher mounds. And this week, this guy moved in to a nice spot under our deck. He or she is good sized, almost knee-high as he stands like that, and he's out rummaging around in the yard fairly often, although he scurries back to his nest as soon as he spots us.
I have named our woodchuck Yuri.
I half-expect to wake up some morning and find a herd of bison has taken residence, which will be very nice…but when the wolf pack moves in, we may have to move.
Life Science
Comments
Posted by: Zeno | July 20, 2009 9:03 AM
Yes, yes. My own backyard is "untamed", too. Anyway, I think it's "untamed". I can't see into it anymore.
Posted by: Newfie | July 20, 2009 9:03 AM
"I'm alright.. nobody worry about me"
Posted by: Blondin | July 20, 2009 9:07 AM
Hmmm, certain scenes from "Caddyshack" come to mind...
Posted by: PZ Myers
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July 20, 2009 9:11 AM
Would you believe my wife has never seen Caddyshack? I'm going to have to rent the video so she can finally understand my Carl impression.
Posted by: Carlie | July 20, 2009 9:12 AM
We have woodchucks, rabbits, deer, and the occasional turkey, along with a hundred thousand squirrels that rip up the yard something fierce. Kind of fun, until one thinks about the futility of gardening...
Posted by: David Wiener
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July 20, 2009 9:14 AM
I used to live by the beach in Santa Monica, CA, and there were a number of bars in the area. On any given Saturday morning there would be a couple of bar fly's wandering the neighborhood - Yuri could pass for one of them. I'm fairly sure his cognitive abilities, breath, and sanitation manners are similar to theirs.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 9:14 AM
Blasphemy
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | July 20, 2009 9:14 AM
When the marshland and swamp starts coming back, then you'll know things have changed. :)
Posted by: Hank Fox | July 20, 2009 9:14 AM
We've got one of those too.
Not to mention this and that and a flock of these.
It's cool as hell to have wildlife in the neighborhood. I just wish we had a few black bears, like I used to have when I lived in the mountains.
Posted by: Mozglubov | July 20, 2009 9:17 AM
My parents' house is on a mountainside in rural BC. They used to get all sorts of creatures wandering around the yard before they adopted a dog last year... The most annoying for me were the wild turkeys. They would spot their reflections in the windows next to the room I stay in when I visit. The turkeys would then get very upset at those 'rival' turkeys and start pecking at them. When they peck on the glass, it constantly sounds like someone is at the back door... I lost count of the number of times they woke me up or otherwise interrupted me to go check if we had guests (and a couple times I ignored legitimate visitors who finally just let themselves in). The only really worrisome critter was the bear who used to steal the grapes, but he was pretty shy of people.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 9:18 AM
If one of those ever made it in our backyard my Husky would destroy it. He's not very nice to the wildlife.
Posted by: James F | July 20, 2009 9:18 AM
#3
Here ya go.
Posted by: Hank Fox | July 20, 2009 9:20 AM
Carlie #5: "the futility of gardening."
I'm having that too. I recently discovered that chipmunks, those tiny, cute little fat-cheeked stripey guys, love to dig up potatoes. I find one or two a day on the lawn, with about three bites taken out of it.
Makes me appreciate why farmers keep cats.
Posted by: Mozglubov | July 20, 2009 9:26 AM
@Hank Fox
You are right about turkeys being ugly as hell... and about it being amazing birds that big can fly. What mountains were you living in that had black bears? I assume it was out west in the Rockies, but I suppose the Appalachians might have black bears... All we ever saw when living in PA was a bunch of scrawny deer, though.
Posted by: Moggie | July 20, 2009 9:33 AM
It looks like Yuri is wondering whether he could chuck that wood.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 9:41 AM
They do.
Posted by: YuriNalarm | July 20, 2009 9:41 AM
I like his name.
Posted by: JefFlyingV | July 20, 2009 9:42 AM
PZ Meyers do you have a growing community of raptors near your home?
One of the big surprises was finding prickly pear cactus in the Blue Mounds State Park of MN.
Posted by: Alpinist
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July 20, 2009 9:48 AM
Hey PZ: My dad used a pretty good no-kill method for getting rid of gophers/moles, at least for many months at a time:
Dig out a mound so you have access to the tunnel. Put the "out" end of a leaf blower pointing into the tunnel, and set up a lit road flare next to the "in" end of the blower. You'll be surprised where you see little columns of smoke rising up in the region. They tend to stay away for awhile after this treatment.
Posted by: Aquaria | July 20, 2009 9:57 AM
Sheesh, PZ, be glad you don't live in San Antonio, where you'd have to deal with the deer who think that yards are for grazing, packs of coyotes treating your subdivision's main road like a freeway, the skunks who will walk right up to you when you step out on the porch for some fresh air (Oh shit! LOL), raccoons who will sit on your skylights to watch TV with you, the gray foxes who think that your backyard is a great place for kits to play, and possums who make your garage their home. Or how about the porcupine who decided he liked one of your trees (WTF--they can climb??? Why the quills, then?!)
Oh, and my neighborhood has become some kind of rest stop for a group of ospreys during migrations. Why our neighborhood? I don't know, but they roost in our taller trees. They ran off the owl living in one of my trees, though, so I'm pissed at them.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 9:57 AM
That or some C4 and a giant firehose
Posted by: Shaggy Maniac | July 20, 2009 10:00 AM
Time for ground squirrel pot-pie? Mmmmm, I bet he tastes like chicken!
Posted by: Carlie | July 20, 2009 10:00 AM
Hank - oh, the chipmunks. Since they're cuter than the squirrels no one ever thinks to blame them, but I'm convinced they have a shadow government and actually rule over the crows. As for the turkeys, it was honestly just this last year that I found out that they can fly. (Me: What are those things in the trees... turkeys??? The hell????) Are you upstate as in real upstate, or what the city people think of as upstate?
Posted by: Iname | July 20, 2009 10:02 AM
PZ, don't be afraid of the wolves. You just gotta assert your dominance. So all you need to do is strip butt naked, find the alpha, and choke that mother fucker out. Then you stand over its limp body and scream "IS THERE NO ONE ELSE!"
Do that and I guarantee nobody will fuck with you for quite some time. :P
Posted by: Susan | July 20, 2009 10:02 AM
Interesting animals are better than tidiness. I like all the spiders, birds and lizards (and sometimes even snakes-- and we live in a big city) we get when we let the backyard go a little nuts.
Posted by: Iname | July 20, 2009 10:04 AM
PZ, don't be afraid of the wolves. You just gotta assert your dominance. So all you need to do is strip butt naked, find the alpha, and choke that mother fucker out. Then you stand over its limp body and scream "IS THERE NO ONE ELSE!"
Do that and I guarantee nobody will fuck with you for quite some time. :P
Posted by: Virgil | July 20, 2009 10:04 AM
One has ben living under our deck for a few years now. The most annoying thing... they can stand on hind legs and reach up into 2 ft tall raised planters, and pull down and eat the leaves of the plants therein. Hmmm... tasty sunflowers. If I was the gun-tot'n type, I'd have the thing stuffed, but the wife is partial to them.
Posted by: KI | July 20, 2009 10:06 AM
Even in the inner city we have raccoons, possums and turkeys. Falcons, hawks and eagles, too. I've recently seen a bald eagle sitting on the lightpost at Highway 100 and interstate 494 looking for roadkill. It's a takeover! (I wish!)
How much ground would a groundhog hog if a groundhog was round ground?
Posted by: Shaggy Maniac | July 20, 2009 10:06 AM
Here you go, PZ:
http://www.wildliferecipes.net/Game_recipes/Small_game_recipes/Woodchuck_recipes/index.asp
Posted by: Max | July 20, 2009 10:08 AM
DON'T MURDER THE GOPHERS!
Posted by: Lance | July 20, 2009 10:17 AM
I ignored a ground hog in my yard for a couple of years. It eventually burrowed under my front porch and loosened a stone in my foundation. It proceeded to kick all the loose sand and gravel under the concrete porch into my crawl space.
I ended up with about six cubic yards of gravel and sand in a huge mound under my house that restricted crawl space access to a large portion of my house. I began a "Great Escape"-like tunneling mission of removing the sand and gravel one bucket at a time but finally gave up and decided to pull up the old sub-flooring since my 120 year old house needed a major leveling of the floors anyway.
Ground hogs can be very destructive.
Posted by: Aquaria | July 20, 2009 10:17 AM
As for the turkeys, it was honestly just this last year that I found out that they can fly
Yeah, they can fly. My son and I came around a bend on one of the windier roads of the Hill Country, and nearly had a wild turkey windshield because about ten of them were flying across the road at that exact moment. We could see the barbs of their feathers, they were so damned close!
Posted by: MrFire | July 20, 2009 10:18 AM
If PZ's yard is big enough to hold a herd of bison, I'll gladly take it off his hands.
By the way, The Joy of Cooking used to have a joyously graphic diagram for skinning squirrels and such. It's the huntsman's boot that gets me...
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 20, 2009 10:21 AM
Nobody--butnobody--rules over crows.
Posted by: Carlie | July 20, 2009 10:23 AM
Nobody--butnobody--rules over crows.
That is exactly what the chipmunks want you to think.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 10:27 AM
Not to mention very poor weathermen.
Posted by: Peter Ashby | July 20, 2009 10:29 AM
An ignorant European raised in the South Seas writes:
So are gophers, groundhogs and woodchucks one and the same beastie then?
BTW anyone else know why Turkeys are called after a country in the Middle East when they are native to North America? It's a cute tale.
Posted by: Cliff Hendroval | July 20, 2009 10:31 AM
I live 45 miles from Times Square and we have chipmunks, squirrels, woodchucks, innumerable deer, raccoons, skunks, and black bears. I've also spotted a porcupine a couple of times about a mile down the road, and coyotes have started showing up in the area as well.
One night I chased a bear away from our garbage; for some reason, on the way out I grabbed a tack hammer as a weapon. I felt really stupid coming back inside.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | July 20, 2009 10:38 AM
I was told it because it when turkeys were first brought back to Europe the idea got around that they came from Turkey. By the time people realised the mistake the name had stuck.
In France they are called dinde, which is a corruption of d'inde, meaning "of India"
Posted by: Max | July 20, 2009 10:41 AM
Does anybody know of a book about gophers/groundhogs/woodchucks/prairie dogs/ground squirrels/etc.?
I can find nothing.
Doesn't matter if it's somewhat technical.
Posted by: Aquaria | July 20, 2009 10:46 AM
Nobody--butnobody--rules over crows.
That is exactly what the chipmunks want you to think.
Hmph. That's what the cephalapods want the chipmunks to think.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 20, 2009 10:48 AM
Groundhogs and woodchucks are the same--they're in the same genus as marmots, the largest of the ground squirrels. Gophers are different; much smaller and from a different family of rodents.
Posted by: KI | July 20, 2009 10:52 AM
@38
Woodchucks and groundhogs are the same critter. Gophers exist in a number of different species, one of which is the chipmunk, others being thirteen-lined ground squirrel and the afore mentioned pocket gopher.
Our fair state (Minnesota) is referred to as "The Gopher State" and the University sports teams are named "gophers". Kinda embarrassing, actually, especially compared to "wolverine" or "bulldog" or some large carnivore.
Posted by: MrFire | July 20, 2009 10:53 AM
Bollocks,
My link in #34 was a dud. Hopefully this fixes it.
Posted by: Hank Fox | July 20, 2009 10:53 AM
Mozglubov #14: What mountains were you living in that had black bears?
I lived on the east side of the Sierras in central California, up about 8,000 feet ASL.
I note the general tenor of the comments here, and I just want to point out that it's better to be able to see and live with wildlife, despite the fact that it can be annoying, than to have none.
When I lived in the mountains, I had ravens, black bears, the occasional mule deer, even coyotes in my yard, and I loved it.
Where I live now, in upstate New York, last night I watched a young red fox, two momma raccoons and no less than NINE raccoon kids playing on the back deck at various times during the night. The raccoon show was like a Three Stooges movie, times three, and they were within ten feet of the back window, playing in the birdbath. The rest of yez should be so lucky.
We get wild turkeys, both red and gray foxes, whitetail deer, possums, raccoons, chipmunks, red and gray squirrels, flying squirrels, blue jays, cardinals, five kinds of woodpeckers including the huge pileated, goldfinches, grackles, doves, nuthatches, black-capped chickadees, pine siskins, even the occasional Baltimore oriole (and right now, several kinds of fireflies).
When I lived in the mountains, I used to joke (only I wasn't joking) that the black bears who came through my yard every night were better neighbors than the snowboarders who lived across the street.
Every day when I discover the potatoes the chipmunks have dug up, I have gruesome fantasies of surprising one of the little bastards with a whack from a 10-pound sledgehammer.
But on the whole, I'd rather lose a few potatoes and have critters, than to have the nicely-groomed "perfect" lawn and garden without them.
Posted by: Chris P | July 20, 2009 10:55 AM
I can never understand this passion in the US to mow everything in sight. People who have land insist on buying one of those silly lawn tractors and spending their Sunday mornings driving around in a cloud of dust (often wearing a face mask). Don't they have better things to do? It is quite absurd given all the wildlife and insects they kill just by doing it. I like prairie - it is NOT "weeds".
Maybe they think they can become lord of the manor by having a house surrounded by parkland. A total waste of fuel and time. One guy down the street must only have about 1000 sq ft of lawn but he still has a ride on mower.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 20, 2009 10:56 AM
Max (#41): this one covers groundhogs.
Posted by: Watchman | July 20, 2009 11:04 AM
Lagomorphs have invaded our hedge. I haven't had to mow the lawn in weeks. Bunnies rawk!
Speaking of little critters (and shattered Molly hopes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC73PHdQX04
Posted by: Mozglubov | July 20, 2009 11:05 AM
@Hank #46
I agree with you - I like to complain about the turkeys (because they are ugly and annoying), but after primarily living away from BC for a decade now I miss them. Of course, I tend to miss the deer, foxes, and other wildlife more, because they don't usually knock on the windows or fail to learn that, when a car seems to be chasing you, the best thing to do is run off the driveway rather than continue running down it, but for all their gobbling stupidity, in my heart of hearts I do still miss the turkeys.
I would take a messy, interesting yard any day over a uniform plot of grass. Keep the uniform lawns for the soccer pitch.
Posted by: Cosmic Teapot | July 20, 2009 11:08 AM
Forget Woodchuck Norris.
It's when you get moles in your garden you need to worry!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fePU5CIHpas
Posted by: Lynna | July 20, 2009 11:12 AM
Damn. Shaggy Maniac @30 beat me to it. Those recipes are civilized compared to old Mountain Man way of cooking marmots, woodchucks, etc. They cooked the animal in it's own skin. Here's how you do it: Dig a pit and build a fire in it. Let the fire burn down to coals. Kill the woodchuck and throw and it in whole (no gutting, no skinning). The coals burn the hair off. The beast swells up thanks to all the innards still inside. Eat the damned thing.
Beware of diseases related to varmints of all kinds. Gophers have been known to eat leather and other camping gear. You might find your lawn furniture all chewed up. Marmots on my brother Steve's property chew on his garden hoses.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 20, 2009 11:14 AM
Indeed, you will have great difficulty living that one down.
Posted by: Tark | July 20, 2009 11:20 AM
Been wondering about that small furry army expansion ... we usually have javelina, geikos, coyotes, rattlers, owls, falcons, etc but until this year (after almost 20) I had never seen squirrels OR chipmunks in our yard. They have just "appeared" and are greatly disturbing the two families of quail. I am not just talking about regular desert prairie dogs either, the gray squirrels have taken over the trees and scamper across the roofs while the small brownish chipmunks seem to be chasing the beetles and the cicadas.
Very odd for this region.
I, for one, look forward to our furry underlords ....
Tax Religion.
Tark
Posted by: Obstreperous Anti-Theist | July 20, 2009 11:22 AM
That is so cute!! I love groundhogs but only rarely see them along the bike paths where I live.
Posted by: Lynna | July 20, 2009 11:27 AM
Coyotes are better woodchuck killers than wolves. PZ needs a pack of coyotes. Moreover, the coyotes will move on after they killed all the available prey.
Posted by: Lynna | July 20, 2009 11:31 AM
Watchman @48: I'll never forgive you for that.
Posted by: Noadi | July 20, 2009 11:32 AM
I love backyard wildlife. I've got a woodchuck too though my dad keeps threatening to eat him (according to him they taste a lot like rabbit).
I've had some interesting visitors to the pasture. A few years ago a bull moose jump over the fence once and scared the shit out of my poor little dwarf goats. Took him about half an hour to figure out how to jump back out.
More recently about two weeks ago a little whitetail fawn got into the pasture with the goats and llama. She climbed right through the wire and was happily eating with the goats until the llama decided to investigate. He's big and funny looking so she took off. Never saw the doe but she must have been close by in the woods.
Okay those are my Maine wildlife stories for the day.
Posted by: detrius | July 20, 2009 11:34 AM
Lower ranking wolves occasionally mount the male alpha wolf of a pack when it's mating with the dominant female.
Posted by: PhysioProf
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July 20, 2009 11:35 AM
Yuri looks like he doesn't take any shit!
Posted by: Ron Sullivan | July 20, 2009 11:39 AM
Dude! This is supposed to be a science blog! Let's have some science!
How much wood does he chuck? Average weekly amount is acceptable; daily cubic footage would be better.
Posted by: Chris Davis
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July 20, 2009 11:39 AM
Badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers,
Badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers,
Mushroom mushroom!
Posted by: JackC
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July 20, 2009 11:40 AM
Local friend (Wallkill, NY) had a red fox just walk into his house when he left a door open to take out garbage. The thing was actually eating from his hand (he has a photo). I told him this could only lead to bad news...
The fox basically made himself at home for a few days, but was eventually shot by a marauding neighbor.
Damn neighbors.
JC
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 20, 2009 12:00 PM
@#53:
"geikos" ?????
Posted by: Hank Fox | July 20, 2009 12:04 PM
Red foxes are jewels with legs.
Anybody who would shoot a red fox ...
Posted by: Carlie | July 20, 2009 12:05 PM
lolchuck
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 20, 2009 12:10 PM
Carlie, that's now my favorite one of all time.
Posted by: maryanne | July 20, 2009 12:11 PM
Here in suburban NJ we have groundhogs, possums that live in the garage, way too many deer that eat everything, squirrels that went insane last year due to a lack of acorns and ate all our pears, chipmunks until the kitties get them, a red fox, wild turkeys,skunks, buzzards, and geese....and that is just in our untamed yard! Black bears have often been spotted nearby and provide the very lame local paper with endless bear headlines, including yesterday a quote from some hunter"some day a bear will kill someone!" Sure thing! Also some praying mantids, my husband's favorites.
We love 'em all but do get exasperated when they devour the garden.
Posted by: HP | July 20, 2009 12:13 PM
JackC @62: You think that's bad? I knew who had Redd Foxx walk into his house. He kept calling my friend "Lamont" for some reason. Otherwise, pretty much the same deal, except for the marauding neighbor.
Posted by: Circe | July 20, 2009 12:24 PM
Delicious bison...
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 12:30 PM
Yes, and healthy comparatively.
Unfortunately that healthiness is a result of less fat so a beef ribeye still wins in my eye... er tongue.
Posted by: AdamK | July 20, 2009 12:32 PM
I tried this, but when I got to the butt naked part all the wolves died laughing.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | July 20, 2009 12:34 PM
Someone who understands the importance of fat in meat!
Posted by: Holbach
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July 20, 2009 12:45 PM
"Hey, where's the crackers?"
Posted by: W. Kevin Vicklund
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July 20, 2009 12:50 PM
Q: What do you call an American marmot in the middle of the road?
A: Groundchuck.
Posted by: Sach | July 20, 2009 12:50 PM
Awww, make better friends with him(/her/it) and take cute photos!
There's an adorable set of photos on flickr by a guy called PowerPig who takes pics of a wild (but friendly) set of chipmunks posed with all kinds of Star Wars toys. Yuri could be posed as Chewy, ha.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 12:56 PM
Q: What do you call an American marmot in the middle of the road?
A: Groundchuck.
Marmots. The scourge of my Teton climbing days.
2 tents, a pair of flipflops, a pair of climbing shoes, a climbing pack, and a number of other small items destroyed. Including a rope I was going to use that day and had lugged to the saddle between the middle and grand Tetons.
Those bastards.
Posted by: Tark | July 20, 2009 1:02 PM
Ah, Sven @63 ...
Would that it were so! Alas, it's "i" before "e" except in
place of "c" ...that's the rule right?
It's so hard to proof and type and have coffee and danish all at the same time. Sigh.
The geckos (insurance commercials, aside) are very kewl. They crawl around the patio ceiling and windows where the good bug hunting is. Its fun to watch them stalk like cats do.
Thanks for spotting. And wouldn't geikos be our satin obi-lords?
Tax Religion.
Tark
Posted by: Dr P | July 20, 2009 1:03 PM
There are a number of areas in the Northeast that have black bear, as someone from Upstate NY has said (I used to live in the in between of upstate and the city and had friends who saw bear even that close!). Here in New Hampshire we actually have one getting into our garbage and we live in town! (We've taken precautions that have stopped it). A friend got photos of a mama and cubs frolicking in his yard which is a bit out of town. Our fish and game agency has warning and educational information about how to discourage the bears from getting into trash, sheds, cars, etc.
We recently saw a fox family out at a tourist area, they've made themselves at home. And I witnessed a groundhog decimating a garden when I was waiting for my bf at the dentist's office. The secretary said that the doc hates that critter because it's eating everything in sight lol It was just slurping these big fat leaves down like pasta lol I watched him for about an hour!
Posted by: AJ Milne | July 20, 2009 1:09 PM
Despite being very downtown, we get regular visitors, too. Got two apple trees and a crabapple, two pears, and tonnes of clover (planted to keep nitrogen fixed in the soil, makes life easier for grass) and our cats don't go outside, so we're a favourite of birds, squirrels, racoons, rabbits, the occasional skunk (those are the only ones I got much issue with... gotta keep holes plugged so they don't move in). Got motion lights around, too, after a breakin a few years ago, so fairly regularly large enough stuff at night sets 'em off, and if I notice, I can stroll over, watch through sunroom windows as a raccoon family does their foraging--and if they're up, our youngish kids do love watching the cubs doing their thing. Generally, as long as the evening visitors leave the house alone (the raccoons do occasionally go after the roofing, seem to figure getting in through the vents might be fun--this invites my using a water hose to convince them to be elsewhere), we leave them be, and they don't seem to mind the lights or the occasional audience anymore.
Posted by: Sili
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July 20, 2009 1:16 PM
I don't recall I the last time I saw a squirrel - we have black ones here. Think there were a couple around uni, but none in the backyard.
Still get the occasional deer, though. The uni actually had to have some of them shot every year. There was an email sent around to staff offering the venison. Quite popular I gather.
Posted by: JackC
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July 20, 2009 1:27 PM
I almost forgot about this one. My sister-in-law walked out of her house and right past this guy - spotted him just a few seconds after what I would have considered "too late" - ran back into the house and grabbed the camera - shot through the screen.
WAY too close for me.
JC
Posted by: Art | July 20, 2009 1:32 PM
Cute.
A friend kept getting complaints from local scolds that his yard was unkept.
Asking around he found out that Florida sometimes allows chunks of land to be designated as wildlife areas. There were various requirements on size and such but the upshot was he designated 12 of his fifteen acres as wildlife habitat. The forest service sent out a forester who made some recommendations to remove non-native and invasive plants and gave him a list of recommended plants he might want to put in. Lots of native flowers were recommended and the native plants need no watering so he now sees lots of wildlife and the plot stays active and at least partly green even during droughts.
He also likes that the land is taxed at a fraction of the normal rate and the unmanicured area pisses off the finger waggers. And that they can't do a thing about it. The wildlife sanctuary designation isn't forever. It is something like a ten year agreement not to develop it so if he has a real need to build or sell he isn't trapped. That said he told me he may donate or sell to the nature conservancy so it stays wild long term. In part he would do this just to annoy the neighbors.
Posted by: Lee Picton | July 20, 2009 1:37 PM
For years we had a resident groundhog (though it might have been any number of generations) living in our suburban backyard. He was always named Harley. One year Harley disappeared when a mamma red fox took over his burrow to raise her kits, which we watched play most of the summer. Mamma would even bring prey and we could watch the kits tearing into it. One day the kits were gone and Harley moved back into his den. I know it is the pattern of foxes to look for dens all ready for them, but it amuses me to think it was a sublet.
Posted by: Hank Fox | July 20, 2009 1:44 PM
The subject of black bears is a pet peeve of mine. Not the bears themselves, but the PR that surrounds them. To hear the government freaks and gunnies tell it, your life is in danger every time a bear is within ten miles.
What really pisses me off is the lack of perspective. More people get killed in any year by lightning on golf courses than by bears, wolves and mountain lions combined. But it's bear and friends that star in the lurid "deadly menace from the wilds" stories.
Your neighbor's driving is a MUCH greater threat to your life and that of your kids.
For 22 years, I lived in a mountain town with probably a couple of dozen bears. There was occasional property damage, garbage to pick up and so forth, but as far as I know, nobody was EVER injured by a bear. I had one big bear that passed every night within 8 feet or so of my front door, and I poked my head out some nights just to say hello.
Another interesting thing about the town is that, in the early years, we had no street lights. If you went for a walk at night, it was in near-complete darkness. Yet I don't recall a single person who hesitated to go out.
There's a reason we humans don't see much wildlife when we go out hiking and camping -- it's because everything out there, bears included, knows we're deadly dangerous even from a distance. Outside of national parks or zoos, you'll see a lot more bear rumps than bears, because they're usually fleeing at top speed away from scary human you.
Here's MY list of bear rules:
1) Don't get between them and their escape route.
2) Don't mess with their cubs.
3) Don't fool with them when they're eating.
4. Don't be stupid and try to touch or pet or approach them.
If you follow the rules, they're as safe as your neighbor's dog.
Over a short distance, they can outrun a horse, and they're strong enough to tear the doors off cars. If they had even a slight desire to eat us, we'd have been extinct 50,000 years ago.
Given a choice of human teenagers or bears for neighbors, I'll always pick the bears.
Posted by: Peter Ashby | July 20, 2009 1:53 PM
@Matt Penfold
Close, back in around the 15th/16thC the English knew the bird we now call the Guinea Fowl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guineafowl (yum, yum!) was called a Turkey because it was thought that they came from there (possibly the Turks introduced them to Europe). So that when they were encountered in New England the superficial resemblance caused the North American bird to be called Turkeys. In the meantime, exploration revealed that Guinea Fowl originate in West Africa so the name for them changed while your fowl stayed being called after Turkey.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 1:58 PM
Hank, when I lived in WY I used to run into Bears all the time. I was frequently up before dawn on paths heading up to climb and there were a few places I ran into Black Bears all the time. Generally if you are aware of your surroundings you can avoid them or not spook them. They don't want to run into you just as much as you don't want to run into them.
I think in my ten years in WY and CO I probably ran across 250 different bear contacts (probably the same bears a few times) and never once had an incident (even a griz twice but that was way scarier).
On the other hand I saw tourists constantly breaking the rules you laid out above and I once had to basically rescue an 8 year old because the family told him to go stand in front of the bear to get his picture snapped.
This was a mom bear with two cubs.
Posted by: JackC
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July 20, 2009 2:02 PM
Hank@84:
#5 - Do not - EVER - FEED them.
But yeah - everything else - spot on. I love bears and hope to seen one a bit more local some day. The one I posted a link to was about an hour from me even more in the woods than I am.
I still would not want to be (more or less) naked in the lawn about 20' away though. I think that kind of attacks rule #4.
The key issue with my sister in law was - the bear was there and she didn't see it until she was well out of the house. That can be a startle, I would think ;-)
JC
Posted by: uncle frogy | July 20, 2009 2:18 PM
I like animals I say that first, so it will be clear. They are beautiful and interesting.
They all have a right to exist that they have earned by existing and surviving.
I live in L.A. harbor in a house over 90 years old.
There are native animals that still can be seen in and around town along with some none native wild animals including raccoons, possums, skunks and squirrel last winter I saw a Red Fox road kill first time I ever saw one not in a cage I think they are an introduced animal not native to the west.
There are also black rats. I do not hear much sympathy for them or the mice that invade our homes and businesses and cause so much damage but they are beautiful also and interesting and have as much right to live as I do.
I must draw the line some where though. I do not want to spend all the time and money repairing the damage that they can do so they do not get to live in, on or under my house or garage.
After living hear and caring for a lime tree for 20 years some squirrels started hanging around and decided that the bark tasted exceptionally good and weakened it so badly that it died.
The possums ate some cat fish I had in some large "tanks" I had outside so did the Raccoons. I have to keep the tank I have with the red eared sliders in covered with hardware cloth otherwise they would be long gone.
I suspect the my dog got sick and died from old sick "Coons" that had been in the yard, She did not like them in her yard very much.
The possums like to eat cat shit so they are wormy.
So I like them all but some just do not get to live in my yard. I watched the squirrels destroy a Humming bird nest for the "nuts" inside.
If the squirrels eyes were not big and facing more forward allowing them to climb and jump around in trees and had small beady eyes like some of the other rodents they would not be liked so well.
My dog did like the boiled squirrels;)
Posted by: Holbach
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July 20, 2009 2:19 PM
Hank Fox @ 84
Your last sentence is right on the mark. Perhaps having the bears around will keep those freaking teenagers at bay.
Posted by: Jyotsana | July 20, 2009 2:29 PM
Mozglubov #10
*giggle* We had peacocks when I was a little girl back in the mid-1970s. One day my dad went out and bought a brand new Datsun 280Z, bronze with chrome bumpers. The peacocks were perturbed by their reflections in the chrome and pecked the hell out of the bumpers. Then they discovered that the slope of the windshield made for a fun slide, so they would get up onto the roof of the car and slide down the windshield on their claws. My dad was beyond irate; it's a wonder we didn't end up with peacock stew.
Posted by: meloniesch | July 20, 2009 2:31 PM
When I was a child, we had a cassowary living in our back yard in North Queensland. He would chase the cat and occasionally mum when she ventured out to put washing on the line. According to the cassowary we were living in HIS back yard.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 2:33 PM
cassowary
Had to look that up.
Glad I did. That picture gave me a good laugh.
Posted by: Cliff Hendroval | July 20, 2009 2:46 PM
New York State had its first ever recorded black bear related fatality just a couple of years ago. A Hasidic family from Brooklyn went to a bungalow colony in the Catskills, and they decided to leave their baby in a stroller in the shade - right around the corner of the building from a dumpster.
Posted by: Patricia, OM
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July 20, 2009 2:50 PM
Watchman - We can be rejects together. I actually have the album by Leonard Nimoy that has that song and many more just as gawd awful, somewhere in a box. It took weeks of begging to get my parents to buy it for me.
Posted by: Ranson | July 20, 2009 3:14 PM
This brings up one of my favorite stories. My dad used to do a lot of work on coal strip mines, occasionally interacting with executives (dad was government, not company). On one site, they had a list of "bear rules" due to black bears ambling through on a regular basis. They included pretty much all the rules above, as well as things like not leaving lunch boxes out, etc. The biggest, boldest lettering all emphasized what I quote above.
Well, this one exec, apparently never having seen an animal before, got intrigued by a "small" (not full-grown, but by no means a cub) bear that ambled up to the lunch site during his tour. As the signs obviously don't apply to executives, he started feeding the bear. He tossed some chips, etc, and let the bear get closer and closer. He finally got really close to hand feeding it, and ran out of spare food. The bear pushed on his hand and snuffled a little, looking for more. The guy tried pushing it away, to no avail.
So he smacked the bear, trying to run it off. The bear smacked back, and left. It just smacked once, fortunately, but that was enough. When dad came home with that story, everyone in the family wondered if the guy was really that stupid. I got the story from at least three different sources over the years, and they all pretty much agreed on the outline of what happened. The guy was lucky not to get mauled.
Dad had previously been a game officer, charged with keeping recovered animals until they could be relocated. We actually had a bear cub for a few days when I was really little. I loved telling people, "I'll bet I've had more and better pets than you." Owls, deer, raccoons, the bear, etc. It was great. My parents have pictures with me as a baby with a baby bobcat sleeping on my lap. It was a cool bit of childhood, I'll give you that
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 3:18 PM
Yikes.
But beyond the immediate issue with feeding bears a very important one is that when you feed bears, bears associate humans with food.
Just check out what happens in Yosemite Valley to get a good idea about this.
Posted by: Thanny
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July 20, 2009 3:31 PM
We have a couple of those here. They frequently come on the deck for seed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWAvVJmY5jA
We also have these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgv8-tgALuo
This is northwest NJ.
Posted by: Don't Panic | July 20, 2009 3:32 PM
Chris@61,
<bad-accent>
Badgers? We don't need no stink'n badgers.
</bad-accent>
Deer, skunks, 'possum, squirrels, coyote, groundhogs, racoons, red fox (I live in an area called Fox Valley so that's apropos). Not all in our backyard (too small, fence enclosed for the dog(s)) but all within 5 miles of our suburban home. No bears, though. Had my bear "close encounter" in upper Yosemite Valley once -- way to close (< 5ft) -- thought I was chasing off a raccoon from my mother's pack when we got in to camp just after dusk. Raccoons can't pick up a 40lb pack and start lopping of into the woods though.
Posted by: Jadehawk, OM
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July 20, 2009 3:42 PM
bah. all the wildlife I get is pigeons, which have destroyed my herbs by pulling them out.
Posted by: daveau
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July 20, 2009 3:44 PM
meloniesch@91 says:
That's essentially my answer whenever I hear someone complaining about how a deer or a rabbit is eating their plants. There aren't too many deer; there are too many humans. Plus, if you don't want deer in your garden, don't plant deer food.
Posted by: Hank Fox | July 20, 2009 3:48 PM
You don't have to feed black bears to have them "associate humans with food." They're a great deal smarter than dogs, and have a sense of smell, I've read, about 15 times more acute. But they're also bright enough to know how dangerous we are.
My whole approach to bears and other critters is the recognition of what we humans really are: a world-spanning monolith of deadly force. Hell, we kill millions of animals each year just getting from place to place (driving) -- not to mention the hunting, trapping, poisoning, ranching, farming, whaling, fur, etc.
To everything else alive, we're INSANELY dangerous. If a bear so much as bumps a human while trying to flee, we interpret it as an attack, and guys in uniforms come and kill every bear within miles.
I hate that. And I hate all the lurid idiot-reporting that leads to it.
I don't just want for there to be room for bears in the world. I want there to be room for bears in the neighborhood.
Having lived with them, I know it's possible. It's also infinitely more interesting to live with them than to live without them.
Posted by: Sili
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July 20, 2009 3:57 PM
Cliff Hendroval,
So they broke rule #5?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 3:58 PM
Yeah I know that, but feeding them enforces that as well lessening their fear of actual humans which of course leads to them being either killed or trapped and moved to a different location.
Posted by: natural cynic | July 20, 2009 4:00 PM
Holbach: Your last sentence is right on the mark. Perhaps having the bears around will keep those freaking teenagers at bay.
Not a chance. Black bears are pussies. When I was 15 [and bulletproof], camping with the family in Yellowstone, two black bears came into the campground doing their pick-a-nick basket searching and freaked out my mother. My older brother and I looked at each other and grinned, grabbed pots and big spoons, sprinted at them screaming and banging away, chased them about half a mile until we were laughing too hard to keep up the pace.
Posted by: woodsong | July 20, 2009 4:05 PM
We have woodchucks too--I took some nice family portraits of 4 babies lined up looking at me near our garage. Unfortunately, their burrow is under the concrete slab foundation for the garage, so we're a bit concerned. Anyone know a good non-fatal way to evict them from such a site? I'm considering just pumping wet concrete in one burrow entrance, leaving them plenty of ways to escape...
We also have deer, rabbits, a few squirrels and chipmunks, lots of birds, and the occasional turkey or fox. Some of the raptors we've seen nearby include redtailed hawks (including one that's pure white! Leucistic, not albino, and ID'd by our local ornithology lab), northern harrier, kestrel, turkey vulture, and screech owl.
And daveau, there most certainly ARE too many deer, at least here in central NY. The figure I've heard is that we have roughly 4 times the carrying capacity of the environment, but the game management people are more interested with keeping hunters happy than in seriously managing the deer herd at healthy population levels. What we need is to bring back the wolves--contrary to PZ's comments above, I'd be far more worried about the dangers of a bison herd than a wolfpack.
Posted by: Newfie | July 20, 2009 4:06 PM
are we up to the point where we start showing off our scars, ala Jaws?
Posted by: Peter Ashby | July 20, 2009 4:06 PM
@RevBDC
Don't be fooled by the look of the cassowary, they are cranky and dangerous animals. They have large, powerful legs and feet tipped with claws. Riled they are wont to try and disembowel you by leaping feet first and scrabbling hard. I can see why it would chase meloniesch's Mum and not the other way around.
Just one of the less dangerous beasties found in and around Australia. Can't think why anyone would want to live there really. Can't play rugby for toffee and can't beat the umpires at cricket even, disgraceful.
Posted by: Rick R | July 20, 2009 4:08 PM
Years ago, I lived in a small town at the base of Sequoia Park. I shared a house in the woods with my sister. Every evening just after sundown, the bears would come down out of the hills and meander around town, checking out people's dumpsters.
One evening I was upstairs, and saw a large black bear outside. I ran downstairs to tell my sister (who was in the kitchen fixing dinner with all the windows open) and came to a screeching halt in front of the sliding glass door (which was open). About five feet away was about 600 lbs. of bear, with nothing between us but a flimsy screen door.
But he/she ambled on their way, and I quietly slid the door shut.
We had all kinds of wildlife up there- squirrels, some very bold raccoons, deer, bears, and swarms of wild turkeys. I live in Arizona now, and although I love the Sonoran desert, the fauna's just not the same.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
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July 20, 2009 4:17 PM
I, for one, welcome our chipmunk overlords.Posted by: Mozglubov | July 20, 2009 4:19 PM
@Jyotsana #90
That's crazy... at least the pecking on the windows never caused that much damage. I also didn't realise peacocks like to slide...
As for the cassowary story, yeah, I've heard they are quite dangerous and strong. Quite crazy looking, but equipped with some powerful kicking legs nonetheless.
Also, as people have already pointed out, black bears aren't really very aggressive with people. The one that used to steal our grapes got surprised one night by my mom as she was walking up the driveway and rounded the corner. They were only a meter or two apart and noticed each other at the same time. She says she let out a rather startled "Oh!", it let out a woof, and they went in opposite directions.
Posted by: CSBSH | July 20, 2009 4:20 PM
What a furry little bastard! You gotta kick its ass!
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
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July 20, 2009 4:22 PM
Rev BDC #86
The way to keep bears away is sew jingle bells to your jacket and carry a can of pepper spray.Incidentally, the way to tell if an area has black bears or grizzly bears is to examine the bear droppings. If the droppings have nut shells and bits of berry and smell of dung, then they're black bear droppings. If they're grizzly bear droppings, you'll see jingle bells and smell pepper spray.
Posted by: daveau
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July 20, 2009 4:24 PM
woodsong@105
Only because we've taken away their habitat. And their predators' habitat. The human population is, what, something like 10 times the carrying capacity of the environment? Not that reducing the human population is a workable solution.
Posted by: deang | July 20, 2009 4:40 PM
How cool that you have all those animals! Is your yard just unmowed, as you say, or have you planted lots of native plants to attract wildlife?
Posted by: Riman Butterbur | July 20, 2009 4:45 PM
A potential problem has occurred to me, that I haven't seen anyone address:
Most human habitats have domestic plants growing all around, not native to the area. Some of these plants may be poisonous to the local animals, and they may not have evolved an aversion to eating them.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 20, 2009 4:47 PM
Think about that for a second.
We have removed the predators and created acceptable habitat (forest edges/field mosaics).
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 20, 2009 4:48 PM
Yeah I've told that joke many times at the climbing shop I worked at. Some people got it, some didn't.
Like I said, I never had any "incidents" just contacts. I never used bells but I did carry pepper spray when I was in the more remote areas in the north of GTNP and Yellowstone. That's where the griz mainly hang out.
Wildlife incidents were pretty commonplace in Yellowstone with the amount of ignorant tourists that funnel through there every year. People have convinced themselves that Bison are just overly hairy funny looking Cows. Which is even funnier because cows don't like you messing with them either.
Posted by: daveau
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July 20, 2009 5:02 PM
Sven DiMilo@116
Yes, we've made a really nice environment for them with great food and few predators, but it is a much smaller area than it was 200 years ago (in the US anyway). My complaint is that our solutions are homocentric, when 90%* of the problem is man's encroachment on the native habitat.
*percentage pulled out of my ass.
Posted by: Doug Little | July 20, 2009 5:06 PM
I've got two words for you
- Jack Russell's
Posted by: woodsong | July 20, 2009 5:09 PM
Daveau:
Agreed about the human population levels, absolutely. But as far as deer habitat, I have to disagree.
I don't claim to be an expert, but the local ecology is a subject I take interest in. As I understand it, cornfields support a much greater population density of deer than deep forest. Whitetailed deer in the NE are one of the few native animal species that have increased in numbers with the coming of the Europeans. There are two factors that I know of in this: the removal of native predators (esp. wolves & cougars); and the changing of forest for farms. Grasslands in general support more grazing/browsing animals than forest. While the early settlers may have found a few small herds of bison in the forest, to get several hundred in a herd you need prarie.
Anyway, I have to log off and head home now. I'll just add my own bear encounter to the current stories:
When I was a teenager, my family went for a week-long campout in the Adirondacks. One of the events of the trip was a hiking/canoeing outing: my stepmother and I would hike out to meet my Dad and stepbrother, who had the canoe, and we'd take the canoe back while they hiked.
Partway up the trail, we heard a loud crashing in the bushes on our right. We thought "Deer!" and stopped, to avoid scaring it, when a black bear came running out. Our reaction? "WOW! A BEAR!"
She didn't charge us, but crossed the path running away from us, then stood up on her hind legs and stood there, about 20 feet away, waving her nose in the air in our direction. What struck me most at the time was her size: she was shorter than us, probably about 5 feet tall. We both started walking slowly backwards so as not to look threatening, all the while exclaiming about the excitement of seeing a bear. I had the impression that she was asking "Hey, who are you?" (I've since heard that when a bear acts like that, that's exactly what they're trying to figure out). After a few moments, she apparently decided we were harmless, and dropped to all fours and headed into the woods.
That's when the cubs showed up.
Three of them, about the size of a medium-sized dog. They all followed their mother single file and disappeared into the woods (to the sound of us exclaiming "Oh! Look at the CUBS! They're so cute!").
We stood where we were for several minutes after that (letting them vacate the area), before continuing on our way. It wasn't until about 20 minutes later that it occurred to either of us that we could have been afraid.
That experience is one of the highlights of all my camping trips.
Posted by: John B Hodges | July 20, 2009 5:14 PM
I live in a college town in the mountains of Virginia. In the middle of town I have seen deer and skunks (and woodchucks); about once every ten years a bear wanders into town, the police call a park ranger to tranquilize it and haul it back out to the woods. My sister lives in an older neighborhood of Lincoln, Nebraska; she has an ornamental fishpond in her small backyard, with a pump and filter creating an artificial creek to feed the pond. Her creek and pond is the only open water for miles around, so she has a constant flow of birds passing through to get a drink. Squirrels also; the residential areas of Lincoln have strict leash laws, so you don't see dogs or cats outside much. What you see is THOUSANDS of squirrels; stand on a street corner and count the squirrels in sight, there will be dozens, perhaps a hundred.
Posted by: daveau
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July 20, 2009 5:16 PM
Sven DiMilo & woodsong
You have a good point about grazing. But that's when the farmers start complaining. Don't plant deer food, then blame the deer.
Yes, time to go home and hug my trees.
Posted by: dead santa | July 20, 2009 5:50 PM
Bear stories (that was a small bear in the picture, wasn't it?)
My partner's brother-in-law has a yearling bearskin hanging on his wall with a newspaper article from his childhood next to it. The article extols his bravery for shooting a bear asleep in its winter den. Yeah, he's still a jerk.
While canoeing in the boundary waters (NE Minnesota), we talked to a 5-foot-something woman canoeing with her small dog. She told us that the night before she had been awoken by the sound of a bear standing upright and swatting at her food pack hanging 12 feet in the air. It was a new pack, so, of course, she ran up to the bear and sprayed it in the muzzle with pepper spray. The bear scrambled up a tree, and she stood underneath it until she realized that was the only escape route for the bear. She backed up, and the bear came down. Then she ran up and sprayed the bear a second time! That was too much for the bear and it ran off. Ten minutes later, she heard pots banging from the next island over. Her dog slept through the whole incident.
Posted by: JackC
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July 20, 2009 6:30 PM
Well - I didn't see the bear, but the bird feeder sits about 24" high - I would estimate the bear to be maybe 36-40" to the withers? Small as bears go but probably a nearly fully grown Black. They don't get much bigger, I don't believe.
Nothing exciting ever happens when I am around.
Love the stories and references about Yosemite - since I am going to be there mid-August.
My mother lives in Tucson. She kept telling me about this lizard in the sorority house courtyard that they were trying to identify. She described it to me, but I am not particularly good with lizards.
The next day, we went to one of the most phenomenal places in the US - the Sonora Desert Museum. While there, we went to a see a presentation of some of the wild fauna - and the guy drags out this magnificent Gila Monster.
You know what's going to happen, don't you? Yep - My mother says "Hey!! That's the Lizard!!"
Yes - we learned they aren't all that dangerous - and the demographics of injury from the beastie is heavily tilted toward males, 18-24 and generally, alcohol is involved. There is an interesting outlier though - persons over 65. The theory is they are working on their garden and perhaps have set their glasses down - then reach for where they think they last placed their tools - and find a rather large lizard instead.
I am looking forward to going back to the museum this year.
JC
Posted by: four directions | July 20, 2009 7:15 PM
Here in the outer ring suburbia of Boston...we've had a woodchuck live under the neighbor's shed for about eight years. Most years she has a litter of young.
We also have the usual- chipmunks, squirrels, several kinds of toads, black field mice, voles, a mole dug his way through one summer. A couple of rabbits, skunks, raccoons. A gray fox comes by occasionally to check on the mice and voles and young woodchucks. And so do the local sparrow hawk and a pair of red-tail hawks. The wild turkeys occasionally maraud through in groups between a pair and a dozen. A coyote was seen a block away recently, and there's a fisher weasel who tried to make off with a neighbor's St. Bernard pup in the spring. And then there was that great turkey vulture in spring about five years ago, fighting for a runover squirrel carcass with a dozen crows.
Running into white-tail deer is commonplace in the parks and such around here- there are some big ones around Walden Pond and in Concord. Saw a white-tail doe with a fawn last summer; the fawn was a lot more curious than frightened. There's been a remarkable comeback of wildlife here in eastern Mass. over the past 20-30 years.
I saw an eight pointer male red-tail deer here, though, on the east side of 95/128, in spring about a year ago. I was walking my husky through a local piece of swamp at sunrise and she didn't see it standing motionless in a clump of bushes about 20 yards away, on the other side of a small body of water. (She regards her business as mostly involving swamp mice and muskrats.) The deer and I looked at each other in surprise and then at the dog. And then we looked at each other again and made a tacit agreement not to tell her....
Posted by: Evolving Squid | July 20, 2009 7:27 PM
You can eat those you know. Tastes kind of like rabbit.
Posted by: Jyotsana | July 20, 2009 7:43 PM
Mozglubov #110 - We moved a year or so later, and my dad was then able to put the time and effort into restoring the Z to its natural beauty. He still has the car today, and it looks great. Even after all this time The Peacocks vs. Z is still a great source of amusement in our family, and the story gets told and retold quite often. As to the sliding, I really wish my parents had thought to take home movies of it.
Huh. Suddenly I just had an image of Patricia's pullets playing on a giant twisty slide... :-)
Posted by: Heather | July 20, 2009 7:57 PM
I just discovered Yuri is Russian for "earth worker". Cute. What an appropriate name for the woodchuck!
http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com/meaning_of_Yuri.html
Posted by: Ted | July 20, 2009 8:10 PM
As a neighbor to the PZ nature preserve I am just happy that he is not as naive as I was when a family of skunks appeared in my yard and I foolishly sought advice from the local authorities. They were less than helpful.
http://www.observethebanana.com/2006/06/17/skunks/
I will keep a look out for Yuri and wave hello.
Posted by: Rey Fox | July 20, 2009 8:21 PM
Hank Fox:
"Red foxes are jewels with legs. "
Damn straight. Also, gray foxes are like finely polished stones with legs.
Posted by: MadScientist | July 20, 2009 8:28 PM
The wolf packs shouldn't send you packing; just remember to keep that pump-action shotgun on you. It's the mountain lion that's more of a threat.
So how much wood would your woodchuck chuck if your woodchuck does chuck would?
Posted by: Ian | July 20, 2009 8:50 PM
One of my dad's cats love eating those things. She eats everything except the head...bones and all. Gorges herself and then sleeps for a day or so.
She'll wait over their holes motionless for hours. She's dedicated.
She got three in one day, once.
Not saying get a cat...most house cats don't have that kind of patience. You'd probably need to adopt a feral cat or a farm cat to be sure you get that kind of calm brutality.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 20, 2009 9:24 PM
I doubt your cat is taking full-grown groundhogs...are these pocket gophers you're talking about?
Posted by: Walter Silveira | July 20, 2009 9:49 PM
lmao..uh...PZ...Not to ruin your name but you are aware that Yuri is also the word for the lesbian genre of Hentai, yes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_(genre)
I'm telling your wife about this. First the tentacles...now yuri...I knew you were a Hentai fan. =p
Posted by: Intelligent Designer | July 20, 2009 10:00 PM
I'd like to adopt the critter. My backyard is designed to attract wildlife. I am sure this guy could find safety even from my dog. He might not like it in Seattle though.
Posted by: atomjack
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July 20, 2009 10:32 PM
This has been quite the enjoyable thread, to say the least. I've pix of ground squirrels, chipmunks, coyotes, blue fox, deer and rattlesnakes (I live in SoCal), etc., that I've taken on various hikes and backpacking trips. I never killed a one of them, not even the rattlesnake. Though I DID stand in front of it to keep it coiled up while one of my offspring brought the camera. Cute lil bugger. I was seriously tempted to shoot one of the mule deer that wandered through a gun range where I was training some range officers, though. At 30 feet, I could have dropped it with my pistol. Mmmm, venison. I called "cease fire", instead.
Posted by: Hank Fox | July 20, 2009 10:37 PM
MadScientist #131: "The wolf packs shouldn't send you packing; just remember to keep that pump-action shotgun on you. It's the mountain lion that's more of a threat."
Too much Argosy reading.
Saying that wolves and mountain lions are some sort of significant threat, in light of the automotive accident rate, is like walking past the wreckage of a packed jumbo jet in order to film a hangnail.
Hell, the National Safety Council estimates there are 2,600 automotive deaths each year just from cellphone use.
Posted by: Paula Helm Murray | July 20, 2009 10:40 PM
We live in the heart of urbia, 5 minutes from downtown Kansas City, and have a wide variety of critters. Our city's park and boulevard system guarantees paths for wildlife all over town, I've even seen a doe with a fawn in the park that overlooks the I-70/Broadway/etc. bluff at the northwest corner of downtown (overlooking the old airport).
Deer, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, Harris, redtail hawks, barn owls, probably horned owls, kestrels and falcons (they hacked some young ones off the AT&T building and they stayed). Opossums that go "f-you' if you say anything to them. Never seem a woodchuck in town though they're sometimes a problem out at our Renaissance Festival site. They dug a HUGE hole in my shop's floor, took quite a repair.
I've got some friends in Colorado who had a bear eat their daughter's car. They live on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Forest. Her moon roof broke, her husband taped a black plastic bag over it to keep the rain out, etc. 400-lb black bear went: "black plastic bag = food!" And fell in. In his panic he trashed the interior of the car, plus adding feces and urine to the decor. He finally went, "Oh, I came in that way, I can get back out!" Which was the thing that pushed the $$$ total to "totaling the car" at the insurance company. While scooching out of the hole he put both his front paws and full weight on the top, which smashed the moon roof tracks AND crushing the top down about 2 inches. Insurance had a hell of a time categorizing the 'accident' and finally listed it as "vandalism."
They HAVE had issues on their road with bears ripping open garage doors and getting into their houses, but it always starts with someone being stupid and leaving their garage door open with garbage in the garage. But they've lived there for 15 years and there have only been three bears that had to be shot.
Posted by: Ragutis | July 21, 2009 3:05 AM
Sadly, no bear stories from me, but at Jonathan Dickinson State Park years ago, we did find panther tracks one morning, right through the middle of our campsite.
As for backyard wildlife, I live in a pretty typical suburban environment, but on a small lake with a fair amount of shoreline vegetation. So, the neighborhood is abundant in squirrels, possums, raccoons and armadillos. You can smell skunk occasionally, but no close encounters, fortunately. No problems other than a dead squirrel in an inaccessible portion of the attic last summer (peeeeee-yew!) and a few twisted ankles after stepping in holes the armadillos are constantly digging in the yard. LOTS of bats. It's great watching them flit around at dusk. Alligators, of course.
We get tons of birds. Egrets, herons, limpkins, ibis, spoonbills, storks, Ahningas, cormorants, coots, Moorhens, gallinules (great word!), vultures, hawks, osprey, eagles, owls and even a few flocks of conures. Seeing 20 or so bright green parrots noisily and happily flying around the neighborhood is just cool.
There's a big white egret that has a daily routine. Always follows the same path from house to house, crossing the street here, crossing back there, as it hunts lizards in everybody's shrubbery. Watching it stalk is pretty neat. And there's a Little Blue Heron that follows him. That one's funny. No idea what it's doing, because it appears to be watching the egret, not hunting. Like some little kid man-crushing on the cool guy of the neighborhood.
Posted by: Edo Bosnar | July 21, 2009 4:10 AM
In response to Peter Ashby's question (#37) about why turkeys are called turkeys, as I understand it, it was basically because some of the birds brought over from the Americas actually made their way to Asia Minor (then the heart of the Ottoman Empire, today's Turkey) via Spain, where the local farmers began breeding them and transformed them into the meaty birds that became the centerpiece of many holiday feasts in Europe and America. That's why the English called them "turkeys".
There was a really great article on this posted on the History News Network's site around Thanksgiving last year:
http://hnn.us/articles/57346.html
Posted by: Mozglubov | July 21, 2009 4:10 AM
I chuckled at that.
Posted by: XauriEL | July 21, 2009 4:31 AM
Uh, PZ? You would rather have wolves than bison around. Seriously, dude, trust me on this one.
Posted by: zpmorgan | July 21, 2009 5:01 AM
...but when the wolf pack moves in, we may have to move
Isn't that attitude what led to their eradication? Wild wolves are supposedly pretty harmless compared to dogs.
Posted by: Fred the Hun
|
July 21, 2009 9:32 AM
Rev. BigDumbChimp @ 92,
That creature had to have been designed by Dr. Seuss! LOL!
Posted by: Max | July 21, 2009 9:58 AM
Sven DiMilo (#47): Thanks, a little pricey for me right this instant, but I bookmarked it
Posted by: Ranson | July 21, 2009 10:29 AM
We had an "exotic game farm" near my college while I was attending. It was originally billed as a zoo, but as soon as the guy got all the animals he wanted, he turned it into a hunting park, but that's another story. Part of the menagerie were some American bison.
The area is perched on rolling Appalachin mountaintops, with relatively steep sides serving as forest and pastureland. The only road runs the ridgeline. The bison occasionally decided they wanted to be in the pasture on the other side of the road. So, they would go. The guy never managed a fence to hold them. Local law enforcement and animal control also quickly found out that if a bison or two is blocking the only road, you just aren't going anywhere for a while.
For another bear story, I almost forgot my own best encounter. I was playing minigolf at midnight after a friend's wedding in Gatlinburg, TN. The course was on a hillside and blended into the forest. On about the 14th or 15th hole, I see what appeared to be a large dog trot onto the course. As we proceed, along about hole 16, I realize that it isn't a dog, it was just farther away than we thoought in the dark. Hole 17 is a little cabin downhill from 16. We watch the full-grown black bear go down to the cabin. It doesn't come back out. People start piling up behind us and complaining (there were a lot of players at midnight, for some reason). I assure them that if they want to ask the bear if they can play through, they can. Everyone pretty much just stands around to watch.
After about 15 or 20 minutes, the bear heads on out in another direction. We play on through (the concentrated "bear" smell in the cabin was overpowering), and when we go to return the cubs, we mentioned the bear to the attendant.
"Did it have a white ear tag?"
"Yeah."
"We know him, he's up here all the time. He won't bug ya."
My attitude was that you might want to put up, I dunno, a sign or something if a bear encounter happens often enough to recognize the bear.
Posted by: Ranson | July 21, 2009 10:35 AM
Return the "clubs", I meant. "Clubs". "Cubs" add a whole new element to the story that was not present before.
Posted by: Ed | July 21, 2009 12:48 PM
Pocket gophers have met their match at my house. I bought a Rodenator device that kills any type of burrowing pest. Take a look at the company's site at www.rodenator.com, you will be as impressed as I was. Ground Hogs are my next animal to try out the Rodenator on, will keep you posted.
Posted by: Joe M. | July 21, 2009 4:55 PM
Amazing how popular this thread is ... and it's one of few that I read all the way through, time constraints be damned. I assume most of us aren't as lucky as the majority of posters, and thus we love Yuri and all the stories here precisely because our biophilia-tanks need refilling. Mine certainly does, what with living in Harvard Square — where pigeons and sparrows, mice and rats appear to be the predominant questionably-charismatic mega-fauna. I miss my youth in rural Colorado, though in those idyllic days a mountain lion sighting was a once-in-a-lifetime treat, not the possible prelude to "what's on the menu -- shit, it's ME" terror ...
Thanks, PZ ... I like virtually all your posts, but once in a while we deserve to treat ourselves to a remembrance of what our educational and political battles are ultimately all about. WE are the true "pro-lifers" -- damn THEM for co-opting the biologist's creed.
And one more thing -- I MIGHT be the only poster here who's studied woodchuck cerebral cortex. One of my students had a "pest" his dad wanted to shoot, while I needed an outgroup to my primates and artiodactyls, and so I sent my student home over Spring Break with a handy-dandy customized woodchuck euthanasia kit (anesthesia, dissecting tools, plastic jars, formalin) ... [Yeah, I'm sure this was illegal, but his dad didn't mind — and science (or at any rate, my doctoral thesis completion) was served.]