On 5/4/2019 9:15 AM, Judith Latham wrote:
In article , dgk
wrote:
On Mon, 25 Mar 2019 18:22:53 -0700 (PDT), Bill Stock
wrote:

I've mentioned that we leave food out for a couple of strays and the
wildlife sometimes gets into it. But the other night I turned on the
light and I see a large Raccoon and a Possum at the same food. The
Possum left as soon as I turned the light on, but he didn't exactly run
away either. I thought Possums were relatively timid, despite all those
sharp little teeth. I don't know what happened before I turned on the
light, but the Raccoon was not aggressive at all, which really
surprised me.

We have raccoons and possums and I'm sure they get along. Possums and
cats get along well, I don't know about raccoons and cats though.
Neither can eat the other so I suspect they leave each other alone.

Raccoons are very smart, and I haven't noticed them being very
aggressive. Mostly you don't see them; but you see the possums.
Possums don't cause problems at all - if you have damage like
overturned garbage cans that almost certainly going to be a raccoon
rather than a possum. I think it's great that they've found ways to
live and thrive in a human dominated world. We've destroyed so much
animal life that we're very likely to follow it into a well deserved
extinction ourselves. Hopefully the raccoons and possums will take
over and do a better job.

You do have interesting wildlife. We have a fox come around sometimes
during the night and for a few weeks we had a badger visit our back
garden. Apart from that it's a very occasional squirrel, birds and
sometimes mice, usually in next door's garden as Sootie seems to keep any
away (or kills) from ours.

Judith

There is some very interesting wildlife in the US and it varies wildly
from state to state. There aren't any badgers (that I know of) in this
country.

I have seen some small red foxes. I'm not talking rural areas where
they might be getting after someones chickens and thus a nuisance. When
I worked in an office complex in Memphis, TN there was a small copse of
woods abutting the parking lot. For a few days one spring we'd look out
the windows and see a fox and her kits playing at the edge of the
parking lot. A couple of times the kits thought it would be fun to run
and jump up on the cars in the parking lot. LOL The vixen (mama fox)
quickly ushered them away. Sadly, a developer bought that land for yet
another office building. A bunch of us were concerned and contacted the
local wildlife preservation society; these foxes need to be relocated
before that idiot razes their home! Sadly, I don't know if that happened.

Where I live now, along with raccoons and opossums (and tons of birds),
there are a lot of deer where I live. There's no hunting allowed in
this community and lots of green space, plants and trees. I love
watching the deer and OB Cats: Buffy is fascinated when she sees them in
my back yard.

I'm told there are wild mink on the island, too. Allegedly they're
rather vicious creatures.

One thing I wish I could see is a hedgehog. From what I've seen on
nature programs and online videos, they're funny little spiny critters
that roll into balls.

Jill