Strange things in the back garden...

[HoosierDaddy]

Looks like a land-based crawfish. Do the taste good if you boil them with plenty of cayenne pepper and salt? Or are they pretty much just cat food?

You put one finger on each side of their head...place them in your mouth and bite down behind the neck until they crunch. Crockadile Dundee said they taste just like saucey chicken on the barbee. I think all real Aussie men eat em in the outback....so I hear...
HD

 

[Mike K.]

That's a great question for someone like me. As an Audubon Society warden/biologist my backyard is a 13,000 acre preserve.
Things in my backyard include: panthers, bobcats, pythons, alligators, bears, coyotes, turtles, herons, egrets, hawks, and all sorts of other wildlife. There's even the legendary skunk ape (if you believe in such crap).

 

[Smithy]

Things in my backyard include: panthers, bobcats, pythons, alligators, bears, coyotes, turtles, herons, egrets, hawks, and all sorts of other wildlife. There's even the legendary skunk ape (if you believe in such crap).

That's being spoilt

 

[Fleur De Guerre]

Well I was woken last night by one of my cats trying to hump the other one in the back garden...strange since they are both male, and they are brothers (and neither has their doodads any more)! The scandal!

 

[Rosie]

Boy am I ever happy for the big horrible city. The strangest thing in my yard was a crazy squirrel who kept attacking my window and then eventually actually got into my house and scared the battootie out of me. I didn't open my back door for two weeks after that episode.

Panthers and bandicouts and raccoons, oh my! I'm afraid just reading the descriptions of the things you guys come across.


On the flip side, there is a BEAUTIFUL cardinal that visits my garden quite often. I've been trying to get a picture of him for a while but he's too fast and now my cameras busted.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Magpies, magpies and more magpies.

And a cat that hunts and eats magpies

bk

 

[Starius]

I live on our family "century farm." We used to raise hogs here but my father retired a few years ago so once the livestock was gone.... lots more wildlife started to move in.

We have

skunks,
possums (and not as attractive as the Australian possum for all our Down Under loungers. I know this because my mother is a Australian citizen and she always tells me the possums here are ugly.),
woodchucks/groundhogs (one lives in the barn and likes to come out sometimes to sunbathe),
raccoons,
moles,
rabbits,
cats (yeah go ahead and laugh, but we have too many here... anyone want a kitten?),
Deer (deer can be pretty annoying. They crap on our yard and eat our small trees and other plants.), and even occasionally a couple of
Turkey Vultures will pass through here over the summer.
And who knows what else roams through that we don't see....​

A very inappropriate deer....

Ugly Turkey Vulture... its a big bird though.

 

[nobodyspecial]

We have quite a variety of birds, rabbits that eat our plants, squirrels that eat the bird seed that falls on the ground from the feeders and deer that eat our plants and try to eat bird seed right out of the feeder. Last night my wife picked up a baby rabbit that had run into our garage. He was a cute little bugger who will someday grow up to eat the plants I just planted last Sunday. Last night we had a fountain installed in the back yard so most likely the deer will be drinking from the fountain at 2 am, right after they eat the bird seed from the feeders. I did see a wild turkey this spring for the first time. In years past a fox lived in a nearby park. A couple of weeks ago a painted turtle laid eggs in our yard, I hope we are around when the eggs hatch and the baby turtles crawl out of the ground. We also see lots of toads.

 

[Rosie]

Magpies, magpies and more magpies.

And a cat that hunts and eats magpies

bk

This picture made me laugh out loud. It looks so ominous but funny.

 

[Salv]

A couple of months ago I found a hedgehog nest tucked away behind my bike tool box in my garage, with three young hedgehogs in it. It's an old garage with a pit in the centre for working under a car, and I kept finding the young ones in the pit, so I stuck a plank of wood in to act as a ramp so they could get back out again. My wife took this photo during one rescue mission:

Sadly one of them died in the nest, and the others never returned.

 

[Miss Brill]

Squirrels, birds, a tiger salamander, and possums are always finding my outdoor/feral cat's food, so I try to put out leftovers they will eat.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

i have a family of red foxes that live in my neck of the woods...

 

[nobodyspecial]

It's looking like we have some moles tunneling in the front yard. One more thing to deal with.

 

[Mike K.]

Recent backyard sighting...

A 100% pure bred Florida Panther. Less than 100 left in the wild.

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

All we have is a squirrel who yells at our dog. It's a funny sight.

 

[LaMedicine]

A 100% pure bred Florida Panther. Less than 100 left in the wild.

WOW. Did you take the pic yourself? He(she?)'s a beauty!!

 

[goldwyn girl]

Wow, the Florida Panther is beautiful.

In my Australian backyard we have bandicoots, kookaburras, possums, cockatoos and parrots.

In our Arizona back yard we had deer, scorpions, coyotes, javelina and one time a bobcat.

And in our Las Vegas backyard Humming birds, Not too much exciting here.

 

[akaBruno]

I see deer daily, too many bunnies, an occasional badger, coons, and a plethora of wild turkeys. Oh... and the neighbors dog.

Bruno

 

[Miss Sis]

Just the maddest cats. I think every cat that lives in our street comes in our garden.

The weirdest thing I have thus far seen of the cats is a few months ago at the full moon, a glanced out to see about six cats sitting in a circle looking at each other. Some kind of cat convention, I suppose. I can imagine their conversation:

'So, these new people, whaddaya think?'
'Well, they have no pets of their own and don't come out yelling when I crap in the vege patch, so they're alright by me!'
'If they could continue to leave out canvas tent bags for me to sleep on, sweet'
'What people?'



P.S: Smithy, I used to hate wetas. Put my foot in a my gumboot once without checking.....

 

[Story]

Deer (deer can be pretty annoying. They crap on our yard and eat our small trees and other plants.),

Easy solution.
http://www.whitetails.com/recipes/recipes.cfm

I live near Fairmount Park (www.fairmountpark.org - largest urban park in the US), which was overrun with whitetail a few years ago until a professional hunter was brought in to thin the out the herds.

Within the last month, I've seen a fox sneaking through a fairly woodsy neighborhood late at night.

Well I was woken last night by one of my cats trying to hump the other one in the back garden...strange since they are both male, and they are brothers (and neither has their doodads any more)! The scandal!

You left your Oscar Wilde books out again, didn't you?

A couple of months ago I found a hedgehog nest tucked away behind my bike tool box in my garage, with three young hedgehogs in it.

Dimsdale!

(This pic has done a few laps around the internet)