City Fox
One of the nicest, friendliest cats of the 10 or so that I feed -- defensively, on the theory that a fat and unhungry cat is less of a threat to birds -- was a pretty siamese tom. I found him yesterday hurt with what looked like a bite to his mouth. I put out some warm milk and when I checked a bit later he was gone. I thought about it and decided he had gone up to a dog in his friendly way to sniff and gotten bitten. This evening after 10 p.m. I went out and saw a medium size fox in my yard across the street where I keep a gallon pan of water for birds, cats, whatever wants a drink.
Mystery solved, and I haven't seen the siamese since. Darn. I liked that cat.
I live in the house I came to right after I was born. Grew up here. And never back when this was a much smaller town were there foxes around, or possums or wild rabbits or prairie dogs. There WERE chickens, pheasants and goats, but that was because we had them in the back yard; legal then. The geese didn't work, because when I went out they chased me to the point that I was afraid to go out, and my mother and grandfather quickly traded them away. The chaos that ensued over attempts to pluck the geese for feathers for pillows could have been a factor too. But those are other stories.
About seven years ago I was here and awakened by a crash coming from the kitchen after 2 a.m. I got up, went to the kitchen, and saw where some plastic storage boxes had fallen from the lowest shelf of the cupboard. I looked where they had fallen from and saw a naked tail hanging down, as though from a giant rat. I looked further and found beady eyes glaring back at me in an unfriendly way. Positive ID -- possum. I reached for it and it hissed and exposed chompers that a baby tyrannosaur would be proud of. What happened to playing dead? I went for gloves and came back and grabbed but the critter was too fast for me, and jumped out of the cupboard, down to the counter, then to the floor, and into the pantry. I cornered the possum on a shelf at the back of the pantry where from the droppings it looked liked it had been hanging out for days. Finally caught it and turned it loose at the back where there are piles of junk. Never saw it again but did see others for a while.
On a bike ride on Broadway at Mackenzie Park at roughly the same year I saw a fawn that had been struck by a vehicle and killed. Saw a coyote running across Broadway. So what's going on? Why the wildlife moving into town in recent years?
Has to be partly drought and meager pickings out in the country, but is that the only reason?
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