We live in the city, but not the downtown area. The larger neighborhood is bordered on one side by a huge wooded area with all kinds of wildlife. Our backyard is filled with trees and we besides the typical city animals like squirrels, we get things like raccoons, groundhogs and opossum roaming around. I’ve personally never send the last three, but our neighbors do. One neighbor sets out those have a heart traps and sets them free in the tony suburbs (they are all pretty destructive in all of our gardens and at least one neighbor has had a raccoon get into the basement of their house).
So, there’s wildlife, but nothing too exotic, although when we first moved here I saw some wild turkeys go through the backyards, but not since. Our yard is fenced on three sides and the front has privet hedges and bushes but is open at the driveway and front walk. A couple of weeks ago A. was working in the far reaches of our yard, which is pretty wooded and a bit wild and saw a fox sitting in there. He also heard a bunch of crows going nuts. Since then the crows go nuts off and on every day (I think they have a nest high up in the tallest trees). So we figured the fox must still be around but we hadn’t seen it, until yesterday. I was making my breakfast and heard the crows. I looked up and out the window and there, sitting in the grass area of our yard, pretty close to the house, was the fox, grooming himself!
I think the damn thing doesn’t know how to get out of our yard. I don’t know how the heck it got into our yard in the first place, it had to walk pretty far and cross many busy streets to get here. A. emailed the SPCA (supposedly the org that does the animal control for our city) but hasn’t heard back yet. My suspicion is that they won’t do anything unless we have it in a trap (that’s what animal control told me when I had the squirrel stuck in our dining room for 6 hours). It makes me nervous having this fox kind of contained in our yard with Z. and her friends going out there (not that they play outside as much anymore, but still).
Crazy!
Note: sorry for the blurry photos but I had to take them with the zoom all the way out and through the kitchen windows. As soon as I opened the back door the fox ran away.
(eta) And this morning there was a deer in the driveway in the back too! We’ve never gotten deer here, it’s really crazy! Also the fox was having fun cavorting with the squirrels on the back lawn again earlier this morning.
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