It finally rained yesterday. Which is great because we’ve been in a drought and I’m tired of dragging the garden hose out after work every day to water my plants. Since my garden is the only green thing around it’s become a smorgasbord for all the deer in the neighborhood anyway.
Speaking of deer, I passed yet another dead one on the side of the road when I was driving to work this morning. There is a lot of undeveloped land here in West Virginia and it’s a perfect habitat for deer because of all the hills, creeks, and forests. Unfortunately there are so many of them that they get hit by cars all the time. At certain times of the year it’s so common that I can almost give directions according to the deer littering the roads: “Start looking for my house on the right after you pass the third dead deer on Route 75.
I know from past experience that it will lie in the same spot for months until there is nothing left but the bones. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m outside the city limits or what, but workers never come by to remove dead animals from the road. They just lie there making me sad.
Last winter I remember someone up the street had a Christmas display near the edge of the road. It was a sleigh with reindeer and it was all lit up with Christmas lights. Well, a deer got hit by a car and ended up dead right at the feet of the fake reindeer. And the deer was there forever!
So here was this cheerful, shiny sleigh and reindeer and right next to it was a gruesome, decaying dead deer. It stayed that way for over a month and nobody seemed to think anything about it. With my winter depression in full swing it just drove me crazy to pass by that every day. Eventually some other sad sack like me must have complained to the right person because one afternoon the deer finally disappeared.
My youngest sister, Missy, lives just a few miles up the road from me so her house is in a rural area like mine. She called me one day a couple weeks ago and told me that her husband, Jon, was taking out the trash one night in his flip-flops and stepped on a snake. It was a copperhead which is venomous; not something you want to step on in the dark. The only reason Jon didn’t end up in the emergency room is that he stepped precisely on top of the snake’s head. They caught it and kept it for a day or two before letting it go. This is a pic of the actual snake Jon stepped on.
Copperhead
There is no shortage of critters around here. I see raccoons, possums, chipmunks, squirrels, toads, owls, bunnies and, of course, deer, on a regular basis. There was a funny news story on TV the other day that showed the city police chasing a ram through the park in Huntington. It was a huge ram with big horns that curled under and everything. It ran into the woods and the police never did catch it or figure out where it came from
I was sleeping with my bedroom window open the other night and I heard something really creepy in the woods behind my house. I had just fallen asleep when I heard a very weird, scary noise outside my window. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It sounded like something screaming. Here’s the sound I heard:
(to hear, click on this link and then choose number 3) The Scary Sound
Well, after hearing that strange screaming sound out there in the dark I’m thinking for sure that Big Foot himself is milling around outside by my compost bin. I was wondering if I should get up and call the police or just lay low and hope the neighbor’s serial killer cat would take care of it. Then the noise stopped and I opted to be in denial and to go back to sleep. I dreamt that my neighbor’s cat killed a Big Foot and left it on my doorstep for me.
Two days later I heard someone on TV talking about how the coyote population was increasing in West Virginia. I didn’t even know there were coyotes in West Virginia. I got online and looked it up and, sure enough, that was a coyote sound I had heard in the woods next to my house. Mystery solved. Shoot, I was already spending the money I was going to get from turning a Big Foot carcass in to the National Enquirer. You would have been able to see my picture right there on page 2, right next to the hunters who shot Hogzilla.
Maybe a coyote will get your neighbor’s cat!!!
Okay, Katie, now I have a funny cartoon picture in my head of the cat chasing the Big Foot who is chasing the coyote who is chasing the cat.
I live in rural Redlands, CA, so I have a lot of critters coming and going, as well. So far, I’ve found two dead possums IN my backyard. Not sure how they ended up dead…either the cats, or my dog, Mandy, who is a Chinese Sharpei. I hear that possums are fierce fighters, so unless my neighbors are throwing dead possums over the fence so I have to deal with it, it’s more than likely Mandy who made the kill. She’s been boostered on the rabies.
I also have a baby skunk who comes to eat the outside cats’ food. In addition, about once a week it sounds like the coyotes capture one of the domestic animals in the neighborhood and send out what I call their “coyote meal song,” which is a 20-second howl, very much like the one on your soundboard.
Across the field from me there are a bunch of new homes, so the wild animals have been displaced quite a bit.
I have indoor cats and outdoor cats. When I first moved here, I would let all the cats come and go as they pleased. However, within the first week they would hunt and bring their prey into my oval bath tub. All the cats would gather in the tub to see what the Great Hunter of the day had captured. Most of the time I would be downstairs and hear a bunch of noise coming from the upstairs bath area. When I arrived, “Baby,” one of my cats, had a live, kicking mouse in his mouth. All the other cats were gathered around to watch and see what Baby was going to do with it. I was able to get him to drop it, and I slipped it into a shoe box and put it back in the field. (I can’t even kill a mouse!!)
Later in the week I heard the clatter in the tub again. When I arrived I found a “de-tailed” lizard (gecko) whatever you call them surrounded by the team of cats, all of them getting in a paw jab here and there at the poor, outnumbered critter. I hear lizards can grow their tails back. So, I rescued the lizard and let it go free outside, once again.
It’s humorous to watch the cats’ reactions when I perform the rescue missions; all the cats follow me every step of the way trying to reclaim their hunt.
Anyway, my animals don’t have the open-door policy available anymore. I control the comings and goings, and everyone is inspected before entering. I just knew I was going to end up finding a “present” in my bed or something sooner or later, when I least expected it. As a matter of fact, I had a dream that I climbed into bed between the sheets, and there was a dead bird’s head (which was another event that occurred in the bathtub – the beheading of a beautiful little bird one sunny afternoon.
Survival of the fittest, I suppose….but not IN my house!!