What kind of wild animals have you seen?

I almost ran into a deer, while driving to work one morning.
I found a LIVE SCORPION in our playdough bag 2 weeks ago. I'm glad I looked first before the children got into it.We've found 3 scorpions so far and they are all in clear contact paper, for observing @ the Science area.
Rebel1

 

If I saw that in my house, I would run away and never, ever come back.

 

omg i should have NEVER OPENED THIS THREAD!! The pics are freaking me out!!

I am a city girl living in the country .....

 

3sons, that spider pic freaked me out 100 times more than sitting next to the window when the bear showed up in the yard! I almost panicked when I had to kill one about the size of a half-dollar the other day; that one would have sent me over the edge...

 

Blue heran
loons
bald eagle
moose while skiing
sandhill cranes
snow geese (thought they were swans)
flock of monarchs
red fox
fawns
black bear
skunk
turkey
badger
coons
black squirrels
flying squirrels
turtles
porcupine
grizzly in Yellowstone
walking sticks
geese
duck

 

I live in a rural area, so it's pretty common to see wildlife. We get skunks, racoons, opossums, and rabbits in the yard pretty often. Sometimes we get box turtles, and we get lots and lots of birds. We have a red-tailed hawk that's been here ever since I bought the house, and once we had a young Coopers hawk take up residence for a few hours. I love the pileated woodpecker, too . . . except when it's announcing territory by drumming on my gutters bright & early in the mornings. I've only seen a deer near the house once, and it was right in the road near the house. I'm sure they're there more often.

My mom sees deer at her house pretty often, and she live in town! She once saw a bear, but we didn't realize it at the time. She thought it was a large black dog. Later someone else saw that it was a bear.

There are elk in the area, but the only one I've ever seen was wen we were on vacation in Tennessee.

 

I suppose elephants, giraffes, lions, and warthogs don't qualify if you see them on safari in Africa?

In that case, geckos, foxes, moose, deer, skunk, squirrel, flying rat (pigeon), seagull, eagle, mice, chickens, roosters... there's more I'm sure...

 

When I was in middle school living in a foreign country, my father took us down to the docks for some reason. (He was a fascinating man--an adventurer.) While there, we spotted a sailor who had a sloth. He was showing it to people. My father got to talking with him and ended up sitting on a crate and having the sloth put in his lap. We have a picture of Dad throwing his head back and laughing because the sloth was taking so long to turn around to see who was holding him.

My husband once hit a cougar with the pick-up truck on his way down off the mountains just outside of Seattle. It didn't survive. Huge cat. The forest rangers took it away.

Bald Eagles are nesting on the lake up in Maine where we have our cabin. Beautiful birds.

My son once came running home to me and told me he had seen a huge turtle. He was 7, and playing in the woods at his friend's house. (We live out in the country.) His description was a like a "fish story"...It just seemed too big to be true. He was insisting that I come see it. So I walked over there, teasing him about exaggerating the size of it. I was wrong. He and his friend had found an enormous snapping turtle about the size of an apple crate. I, of course, freaked out and made the boys promise to never go into the woods again.

I was picking blueberries up in Maine one day when I was in high school, way up in the hills, and heard a noise on the other side of some brush. I peeked around the brush and saw a bear. I left very quickly...and very quietly.

The rest of the animals we've seen have pretty much been expected to be there....'cept the dang possum that got into the house because that same boy of mine left the garage door open one evening. You never heard such screeching coming from me. It wouldn't move when I was trying to get it to move, and then it would move suddenly, then play dead. I hate possums. The kid finally captured it with a laundry basket and a piece of plywood. (I threw the basket away.)