MagiStream

I have taken care of many odd wildlife-type animals. My family seems to be the kind of family who ends up with odd animals and has the wierd family member that brings home evrything you could ever imagine. Sure, I've handled fish, frogs, snakes, toads, etc. from the wild but alot of people have.

My grandfather took a bear off the hands of a man who was stuck with them and did not even know what to feed them because there was an old lady in his family who had all of them but died. So my grandpa took a baby and I was ove rhis house alot helping him bottle feed the bear and I played with it to. It was really fun, but we did know we were going to have to rehome it. We kept him in the house because he was so young only a few moths old. We found him a caring home in the local zoo because he obviously could not go back into the wild and we are really against people keeping big wild animals as pets. We kept him until he no longer needed bottle fed and then gave him to the zoo.

A few months later my grandpa found a nest of baby racoons in his attic and the mother with them. But the mother died and so he took the three little babies and bottle fed them just like the bear. And just like the bear I was there to help take care of them whenever I could be. There were three, they were all boys, and they were pretty friendly. We did however raise them to be wild. As soon as they were off the bottle they were outside. They lived in my grandpas shed-they have a ton of land-away from the house and they had free roam of the shed. They slept in it during the day and came out around twilight. We did leave them scraps of food for a while and we would go out and see them but they grew more and more independant on their own so we let them go. They are all grown up now, and gone. We tagged them with those little silver rings on their legs aswell.
I was a bit attatched to the animals. We called the bear 'Smokey'. The raccoons had two sets of names. My grandpa called them 'Lary', 'Curly', and 'Moe'. I called them 'Roscoe', 'Rascal', and 'Bandit'.

Last Saturday something like a neighbor using a hammer woke me up early. I couldn't figure out what it was until I looked out my window.

The Lord God birds (otherwise known as the sometimes-elusive-usually-thought-extinct ivory billed woodpecker) were back. Less than twenty-five feet away from the house was a pair of these twenty inch birds. Sometimes supposed sightings turn out to be the related reticulated woodpecker, but these had the distinct white striping along the leading edges of their wings and I had a good, clear view of the white bill which gives them their name.

I woke up Pshawraven so she could see them --- this is a life list bird for sure! --- and we watched them for about ten minutes before they flew away. Male and female, the females have a black crest rather than a red one and aren't as big.

Yesterday, driving on our errands, we saw a robin-like brown striped bird in the bush nearby. Pshawraven backed the truck up so we could see better and it turned out to be a hermit thrush. While these are common, neither she nor I had had a sighting in the wild. One more bird to mark off the lists!

It's been quiet here since the wildfire. I haven't seen much of the creatures who normally frequent our neck of the woods at all. I'm thinking it may have gotten too dry for them or they were caught in the fire. Not even the snakes are active, which is odd. Normally we'd have had at least the hognose out in the yard by now.

I think the riticulated woodpecker is so cool. They are amazing. They're huge.

Nightshayde wrote:I think the riticulated woodpecker is so cool. They are amazing. They're huge.

They really are I hope someday you get to see an ivory bill...they're even larger and more majestic. I can understand why they're having such a hard time proving that these guys still exist; they're timid and fast flyers. If they suspect they're being watched, they disappear in the literal blink of an eye. When I turned the report into the Cornell birding site, they expanded the range down here only because I was able to describe their distinct call and knock and because they make a distinct type of hole in trees for which I had pictures.

This afternoon we got another bird for our life list: a pine warbler. His bright yellow front combined with sparrow-like striping attracted my attention.

A coyote has been getting into our trash. I'm debating a live trap so that I can put him in an enclosure and tame him. Always wanted one and I could get the wildlife license to keep him too. They're considered vermin here and you're supposed to shoot them. I can't bear to do it.

TxCat wrote:
A coyote has been getting into our trash. I'm debating a live trap so that I can put him in an enclosure and tame him. Always wanted one and I could get the wildlife license to keep him too. They're considered vermin here and you're supposed to shoot them. I can't bear to do it.

Is it possible to tame a wild-born coyote? Captive-born dingoes get used to people and become quite tame, but wild dingoes never do.

In fact, wild dingoes that become used to people become very dangerous because they see young children as prey.

Batty wrote:Is it possible to tame a wild-born coyote? Captive-born dingoes get used to people and become quite tame, but wild dingoes never do.

In fact, wild dingoes that become used to people become very dangerous because they see young children as prey.

Research leads me to believe it can be done. This guy is also young, looks like a half grown pup. The alternative is just unspeakable. I can't shoot him and the neighbors will. I don't expect him to ever be a pet, but I'm hoping that he'll live out his life in the enclosure we'll build for him.

TxCat wrote:

Batty wrote:Is it possible to tame a wild-born coyote? Captive-born dingoes get used to people and become quite tame, but wild dingoes never do.

In fact, wild dingoes that become used to people become very dangerous because they see young children as prey.

Research leads me to believe it can be done. This guy is also young, looks like a half grown pup. The alternative is just unspeakable. I can't shoot him and the neighbors will. I don't expect him to ever be a pet, but I'm hoping that he'll live out his life in the enclosure we'll build for him.

You are an amazingly lucky person. I always wished I could grow up somewhere were there's lots of wildlife but no, I'm stuck in the city doing nothing. Absolutely nothing.
My friend has a house out in the country though and we go there and go down to the stream an spend the day searching for salamanders. I love salamanders. So far we'e gotten line-back, double line-back, dusky, leadface, and one other one I don't remember the name of. I want to catch a purple one, those are pretty. The name escapes me though...

I This The Rat Snakes are the cutest things at all.

Rat snakes are medium to large constrictors that can be found through a great portion of the northern hemisphere. They feed primarily on rodents and birds and, with some species exceeding 3 m (10 feet), they can occupy top levels of some food chains. Many species make attractive and docile pets and one, the corn snake, is one of the most popular reptile pets in the world. Other species can be very skittish and sometimes aggressive but bites are seldom serious. As with nearly all colubrids, rat snakes pose no threat to humans. Rat snakes were long thought to be completely nonvenomous, but recent studies have shown that some Old World species do possess small amounts of venom (amounts so small as to be negligible to humans).

Previously, most rat snakes were assigned to the genus Elaphe but many have been since renamed following mitochondrial DNA analysis performed in 2002. For the purpose of this article names will be harmonized with the TIGR Database. When searching for information on a particular species of rat snake it might be useful to query the old name, Elaphe sp., as well as the new.

I don't know if we have rat snakes, but we do have the corn snakes. About four seasons ago, my husband took a picture of a young one winding its way along the old stairs into the house. It was unbelievably beautiful.

I haven't seen the hognose in a while; he might have moved on because of the dry weather. When we found him in the palmettos, though, he'd figured out that he could hang around under the bird feeder and eat the doves. We didn't mind that because he was so gorgeous. My husband caught him and we all took turns looking at him.

I am hoping these sitings mean good things for the gopher tortoise population; they're small, young specimens but I've seen about three alive in our stretch of the woods since this spring. That's more than I've seen in twelve years of living here.

Fish and Game's only recommendation for the 'yote was to shoot it so I think I'm going to try live trapping it instead. I'd never trust it as an indoor pet (I'd have to be an idiot to do so) but everything I've been able to find says that they do well in enclosures and will even become fond of their human caretakers.

Just because something is a pest to humanity, that doesn't mean it needs shot to extinction. The 'yote was there first.

I see a lot more wildlife than most people do, living right across the street from some forested area and down the street from more. I've seen several deer, and even got a picture of one standing in the canal behind my house with the sunset turning the water pink. It was unbelievably beautiful.

Then there was an opossum in my backyard. It was a young one, and my German Shepard bit it in the head. It was surprisingly unharmed, or at least not badly harmed, before we got the dog inside and trapped the possum to look at it. It hissed-and I will say that hiss scared me. We let it go afterwards, as the bite wasn't deep, and it hissed some more before scampering off.

We've also had a rattlesnake in our backyard-a pretty big one, too. About six feet. It was so amazing to be so close to it, even though I was terrified the whole time. It came slithering under the fence while I was sitting there reading a book, and I froze there. I was like ten, and I remember screaming for my mom, while the snake just lay there staring but at me, just two feet away. Eventually, it left, and I don't believe I ever wanna see it again

There are families of blue jays, cardinals, woodpeckers, and squirrels who live in the trees by my house, and I recall the one time a hawk was flying through. It got mobbed, the poor thing. There are a couple huge turkey vultures, and bats, as well as leopard frogs, and these big white Cuban toads who like our pond. One of the toads hopped on me

There was a gorgeous, red and yellow corn snake in our tree, and the blue jays didn't like it anymore than the hawk

There's also a big, pileated woodpecker who likes to fly through every summer. I've come within five feet of him, and got a few amazing pictures.