Wild Kingdom

The signs have been there all along. Footprints in the snow. Reminants of chewed bag and bird seed in the garage. The eerie feeling of eyes peering at you through the dark as you sit inside your warm and comfy home. And of course, the unsettling pitter-patter of four legs crawling above you as you watch TV in the basement before you have any furniture.

Yet somehow, despite (or perhaps because of) these signs, I was under the assumption that we were the ones moving into the house, which just happens to be amongst more rural and natural surroundings. But as winter turned to spring and now spring is turning back to winter – (I think that’s fair considering 32 out of the last 42 days have been raining and cold according to our local meteorologist) – I am beginning to wonder if it is we who have wandered into the wilderness into a home that does not belong there.

Aside from those pesky mice we thought we were rid of, we next encountered foxes. The evidence was there even before the first sighting. There was the mysterious “droppings” on the pool cover and the footprints that didn’t quite seem big enough to be a deer nor small enough to be a rabbit. Then, early one morning, George calls me into the backroom. He was staring out the window pointing. Two baby foxes were sitting quietly on the steps of the pool. They appeared to notice us but didn’t move. They didn’t even seem to flinch. Later that day, I came home from work and there were about six little fox pups playing with one another on the pool deck. For the next few days, our backyard served as their playground. I called animal control. For a hefty fee, I found someone who would take them to a safe place and for free, I found someone who said they would scare off rather easily. We did the latter. And it seemed to work. Until this week when we came home from dinner and found 2 foraging in the front yard.

Then there was the snake. At first, I was thinking the shrubs around the pool might be nice. They’d offer a bit of color and easy to maintain. I was wrong. They take up valuable real estate, are littered with weeds and worst of all, house a snake (or multiple snakes I’m afraid). Of course, I come to know this because I was trying to be a good homeowner and take care of the weeds. Normally, I wear my stylish gardening gloves but on said day, I decided I would quickly pull what I could manage with my naked hands. It would make for a better story if I said I plunged my hand into a tangled web of green, felt the squirm of something moving and wrestled it out of the shrub with my brute strength but that would be lying. Instead, out of the corner of my eye I saw something move, whipped my hand up nearly dislocating my shoulder and screamed like I’d just seen the devil as I jumped up and ran to nowhere in particular. I crept slowly back over and the snake, calm as can be was resting on top of the shrubs. A few days later I went back to the scene out of curiosity and saw abandoned snake skin marking the territory.

Then there was frog. Again, the culprit? Shrubs by the pool. We had heard a deep, loud croaking for a couple of weeks but couldn’t quite place where it was coming from. Shortly thereafter, George found him taking in a few laps in the pool one morning.

And of course, you can’t have the wild kingdom without deer. We’ve spotted a few in the backyard recently and just today, there was a buck, complete with antlers and doe companion.

What we did not expect is some oversized rodent/mole thing. It was brown and squat and surprisingly fast. It came out one afternoon with the sun after a morning of rain and clouds.

The mice are still around. Perhaps trying to escape the rain, two managed to find their way back into our basement ceiling, another one wrapped up in a rug in the pool house and a chewed up “Sham-Wow” under the sink, indicate they have friends.

After all this rain, next may be an alligator or shark.

Ah, country living.