Wild Kingdom

If you've never been to our house, we live in the suburbs and major metropolitan areas are not that far off. But the area is also close a greenbelt and has a slightly rural feeling, despite the fact that we've all got about ten square feet per house lot. That's what makes it interesting. Even though our yard is a joke, we don't have much of it and what we do have is almost all vertical, we certainly get the wildlife.
First there was the deer. One of the reasons we chose this neighborhood was because I spotted one of those "rats with hooves" (neighbor's term) here when we first scouted this area. The deer are really prevalent this year. I was aware we were in for a particularly deer-ific year when there were eight of them in the vacant lot across the street on Christmas Day. (Proof that Rudolf is a myth, I suppose.) We have two that are pretty regular right now- a buck and a doe who seem like yearlings. I think they're a little young to have fawns of their own, but maybe that's just my conservative upbringing.
Poppy was probably a little young too, but she still had her babies. And while on Possum Watch 2007, I have been surprised by others tripping the Possum Alert System (otherwise known as our patio light, which has a motion sensor.) The first surprise was the most heart stopping, as a I bounded to the patio blinds expecting baby possums only to see a cute, little skunk about five feet from the doors. Uh, nice skunk. Go on about your business, nothing to see here.  The poor baby was limping ever so slightly on a front paw. A few days later a huge raccoon was limping a lot more obviously on his left rear paw. Huh. It seemed unlikely that Poppy was fighting something twice her size. Finally, we saw what we assumed to be her boyfriend lumbering through the yard. We named him Porky because he was a huge barrel-chested opossum that probably would have initiated bar fights had he been human. Whoa. I just turned the porch light off and let him get wherever he was going before he broke a bottle over something's head out there. Why is it all the smaller mammals get better use out of my patio than me?
But it's the birds that make up most of our wildlife viewing, in sheer numbers if not in actual mass. We keep bird feeders of various sort that I spend the money to refill from the crazy bird store (named for the kindly eccentrics that staff the place, not for any neurotic birds.) Word seems to have gotten out that we got the Michelen five star rating, because they hang out in droves out there and we go through a huge volume of seed in a surprisingly short time. Sometimes, we even get to see more than just feeding. Our next door neighbor's house is so close to ours that we have a good view of his eaves from Tony's office window. So Tony spent a fair amount of time watching little birds grow up under these eaves. Evidently, the tiny ventilation holes in his house are perfect for starlings. Unlike our huge, grated ventilation holes, which are perfect for kestrels once they tear the grate off with their talons. Ahem. Anyway, two little birds fledged last week. This was wonderful to watch. At least it was until a feral cat snuck up the side of our house and grabbed one screaming chick. Eeep! You could just hear a Marlin Perkins voice-over on the hardships of life in the animal kingdom. We then spent a bit of time trying to keep the cat away from the other baby bird, which was a bit easier when two stray pit-bulls showed up. They were a boy and girl dog out for a spring romp and the girl was obviously a new mommie herself- she had so much milk, she looked like a mutated cow. Ow! I took our new dogs for a walk and tried to find the owners- after all, it worked for Muck. I don't know what it is about this neighborhood that they like their pit bull mixes so much, but every one I've seen has been well trained and well loved. I took these two around leash-less because I only had to clap and call and they'd come bounding back to heel. Great dogs. So I was glad when somebody finally recognized them. After all, there are hungry puppies somewhere. Sadly, we couldn't keep them for a while to protect the other fledging bird, who disappeared in the night. Either he got airborne or eaten. I don't want to know which.
A slightly bigger bird made its appearance this morning. In a re-enactment of the opening scene from Hitchhikers, the one where Arthur Dent goes about his morning not registering the bulldozer, I traipsed back and forth in front of the kitchen window trying to tell myself something was amiss. As I went to the coffee machine, I realized there was something dark in the backyard just beyond the bird feeder. What I consider the backyard is about twenty feet deep, so I really should have taken a second look. Walked past the kitchen window three times getting the machine ready to brew. Only when it was actually brewing did I take the time to look up. Straight at the turkey vulture, who was watching me with an intensity that made me wonder if my doctor wasn't telling me something. I jumped, which made him floof. Tony, the avid birdwatcher, happened to be working at home so he got a few pictures before the vulture took off. That's our little grim reaper pictured above. Yeesh. To his defense, there have also been a huge amount of wild turkeys this year, so many that I've actually heard them as well as seen them from time to time. Where there's an increase in turkeys, I guess it stands to reason there should be an increase in turkey vultures. But really, not on my back patio thanks. It's a wee bit unnerving.
There's also been the usual assortment of birds: finches are here for the summer, doves live in one of the feeders and the hummingbirds buzz each other in little dogfights for rights to the lavender and their feeders. It kills me all this goes on in an area where I can be on three expressways or intra-city rail in a matter of minutes.