Wild Kingdom

I live in a relatively small town, but it isn’t rural. The population is roughly 5,000 people. I live on a main street that has lots of traffic during the day. So with this being said: can someone explain to me why it’s like wild kingdom in my yard?

Seriously: it seems like lately you never know what you might see hanging around. Granted, the backyard extends almost to the Hudson River. The groundskeeper only mows a couple of feet past the garage, so there is a lot of grass and assorted greenery that critters can hide in. (which is why I’m never in the back yard.)

We have lived in this particular house for just over three years. Each year there seems to be something else to keep me inside the house. The first year it was bats. We had two that got in through a vent in MY bathroom. Oh, you know I had Kitty take care of that! At first, I thought it was a bird but quickly discovered I was wrong. Technically, that should have kept me out of the house, but I knew there were probably more out there!

The next year a skunk wanted to sit at the end of the driveway. I was trapped in my car while he just sat there and enjoyed the evening breeze. I had to wait twenty minutes, until he decided to waddle on home (wherever that was). Seriously!

Last year, a woodchuck took a liking to Kitty’s garden and started hanging around. You know that Kitty made sure he had absolutely no access to her vegetables. However, he continued to hope she would forget to shut the gate door so he could go in. She never did.

Brie was sitting on the front porch one night communing with God. She heard a noise and looked up to see a possum walking across the front yard. She made a beeline back into the house!

This year Kitty decided to do just a potted garden and has the pots on the front porch. This way, she figures the woodchuck won’t come up there. Imagine our surprise when one day Brie calls her sister from the car. “Kitty, what in the world is that sitting in our back yard??” Kitty went to look out the back door and answered, “It’s a woodchuck.” “That’s the fattest woodchuck I’ve ever seen!” Now I had to look out the back door and Brie was right: the woodchuck was huge. He was sitting in the middle of the back yard having a snack. I’m not sure what he was eating, probably dropped bird seed, but he seemed very content with life in general. I’m hoping that if he gets enough bird seed, he won’t come to the front to eat Kitty’s plants. After he was finished enjoying his food, he lumbered into the tall grass beyond the garage.

Then there was last night. Brie, who is like me, was sitting in her car on the phone after teaching her fitness class. I was turning into the driveway with Kitty, whom I had just picked up from work. My headlights picked up something at the end of the driveway. “What is that: the neighbor’s cat?” I asked Kitty. “Nope, it’s a fox.” “What????”  Yes: there was a fox there at the end of the driveway. He was chewing on something (God only knows what). We heard Brie yelling out her window, “What the heck is that?” Kitty rolled down her window. “A fox.”  “In our town?” None of us could believe it. We watched the fox eat whatever it was eating while we waited in our cars in case it was rabid. It didn’t appear to be, but we wouldn’t know since we’d never had one in our yard before. When Mr. Fox was finished with his repast, he went into the big set of bushes by our garage.

I wonder what those animals were eating back there. I haven’t been curious enough to go back there to find out. I just hope nothing bigger happens to come shambling out of the tall grass in the back. We’ve had enough of wild kingdom!