Our Raccon and Skunk Study: Mammals of the Night

This is a visitor we had at our back door a few summers ago. We had a family of skunks and a couple of raccoons that frequented our backyard in the evenings all that long summer. The raccoon would stand at our door and look in until we would chase him off…..this is when we started keeping our cat’s food dish inside. We knew he was eating the food because he would wash the kibble in the water dish, making the water brown and his footprints would lead from the dish off to the edge of the deck.

Last summer was the summer of the skunk in our neighborhood. Just about every night we would smell the fragrance of skunk coming in the windows. This summer….nothing. No skunks at all that I have seen or smelled. What a relief! But also now that I think about it, sort of interesting and curious. Now that we have no grass in the front yard it will probably mean we no longer have a skunk digging around for something to eat….didn’t think about that aspect of our yard remodel.

Mr. B and I have spent more than the usual amount of time outdoors at night the past few weeks as part of his astronomy study. I don’t think we have heard any mammals around the yard except for our cats. We listened to crickets the other night as we sat and watched the stars. A friend of ours said they had a mountain lion on their property last week! I am happy to report we do not have a mountain lion this year like we did last year in our neighborhood. It went around knocking trash cans over and making messes on trash night.

That reminds me of a conversation we had when we were camping at Yosemite in July. My boys and I were talking about whether we were more afraid of bears or mountain lions. We all agreed that in our experience bears were far less intimidating than a mountain lion. I thought that was interesting and we talked a lot about why we were more afraid of the mountain lion. We talked about how bears appear and go about their quest looking for food. If you stay out of their way, they usually just go about their business. Mountain lions seem to be all teeth and claws and if you have heard one scream, well, it is frightening. The one in our neighborhood sounded like a loud baby crying….it totally creeped me out. It was almost as eerie as a coyote howling.

Well, that is our mammal post to wrap up our summer nature study series. We are anxious to start the autumn challenges. My husband and I have sat down to plan some field trips to enhance our studies. We may revisit bats this fall since they seem to be out in record numbers this week. There is also a resident squirrel that needs some observations and journals recorded. We realized too that we have not done a formal study of our frequent guest at the feeder, the white-breasted nuthatch so that may get done alongside our autumn bird study for the challenge.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this summer series of nature study a great success and joy.