
Kid 1, running down the stairs last night.
Me: What’s going on?
Kid 1: I ordered food and the driver can’t get out of the car because he’s surrounded by bobcats! :dashes out the front door::
Me: Did she just say bobcats?
Gordon gets up and heads to the door.
I present to you the pack of scary bobcats that terrified the food delivery driver. Here is one of the vicious beasts devouring the cat food.

Have you ever seen something more horrible?


Oh no, black and white squirrel, don’t come over, you’ll get eaten!

Look at the carnage. Look at it.

There were about 5 or 6 cute little foxes. They were utterly adorable, but now we for sure have to figure out some way to feed the cats off the ground. We tried doing the barrel shaped food dispenser on top of the cat shelter before, but the raccoons unscrewed it and stole all of the food.
And that concludes your dose of horrible gore for today. 🙂
PS. Oh, hey, Jeaniene, I see your cute ducklings bathing in your cat water dish and raise you adorable foxes. Your move.
Y’all and your wildlife, smh. Do you live in a forest clearing in a house with chicken legs? Just asking.
+1! Great comment!
Bobcats? Oy!
LOL!! I was like, “Huh. Doesn’t look like a bobcat…”
But it DOES sound like a scene from Hidden Legacy. Just sub Arabella for Kid 1, and…IDK…team of assassins for “pack of scary bobcats.”
House Harrison being the instigators no doubt.
I think a group of bobcats is a “Kindle”.
So cute!
No, it’s just a really weird suburb with deer, very small deer, running around at all hours and skunks, raccoons, and now foxes at night. It seems like you’re really in the country, it gets country dark, but we’re like 10 min from a major highway.
Time to get one of those motion-activated trail cameras.
Honestly, that’s really awesome <3
Agree with you Kat. I have a Moultrie and the shots of wildlife is awesome. I had no clue I had a ten point! (! was hunters) deer Until deputies were looking at pictures on SD card for riding mower thieves. Got picture of feral dog pack digging into chicken pen. You really don’t see a lot of wildlife during day light.
I live in a older suburb in Spring TX and we have squirrels, possums, raccoons, skunks, lots a feral cats, and the occasional deer so your neighborhood isn’t that weird. I think it’s a Texas thing.
Dayton Nevada has wild horses. I don’t live there but I visit. I have pictures.
I see a future scene in play for Cornelius!
+1
Oh my gosh!!!! Too cute!!!
Hahahahahahaha. Scary adorable “bobcats”. That snunk tho…
Don’t forget the black and white squirrel.
Love the little ???? foxes.
Did you get your delivery??
Thanks , waiting for a delivery right now,
*the raccoons unscrewed it and stole all of the food*. ….. I need a racoon in my life????
Oh hunni. Nope.they are so clever! We call them trash pandas because they work in teams to get into trash cans.
We have to bungee our trash can closed for this reason!
Yup. My trash panda knocks on my bedroom window because we used a bungee cord on our trash can. I opened the window and we had a conversation. I won.
My father had to bungee and hang the garbage can from a tree limb!
Hahahaha, congrats on winning the convo; those raccoons can be quite convincing, I hear.
Sigh, you got all the cute critters. We got messy “shark squirrels.”
Squirrels are tree climbing rats with bad dispositions. They terrorized us in college – old dorm rooms with no AC, so had to open windows too old to have screens. They would get in rooms and cause all sorts of havoc. My husband laughs at my residual squirrel trauma and distaste. They are not the cute woodland creatures so many seem to think they are.
I used to scorn squirrels, but have come to appreciate them in my agedness… I just can’t despise creatures that casually leap into nothing, knowing, hoping, planning to grab something to help break their fall, and get to food, or escape the scary two-legs… I don’t feed them, but there is something to their skills that inspires me.
I have squirrel trauma too! People think they are so cute, but they are a menace. They used to chase me when I was little if I went outside my house to eat something. They would also beat on the picture window when we were eating. Our neighbors fed them so they felt entitled. I have a whole theory on how unnatural and evil they are. I don’t think they die natural deaths. No I am not crazy.
Ohh Country dark!!
Great phrase.
Oh my gosh the wildlife is so cute. We have Foxes, deer and racoons which are so used to people and the sounds of military artillery that they are not skittish. We are certain the racoons are getting into our closed trash cans, tearing into the bags, then getting into my neighbors engine block and feasting.
We havent caught them on camera yet, but the cans are always closed in the mornings and the neighbor has food bits, and paper in her engine.
We try to tell other neighbors stop feeding them but if they can open the trash cans its a moot point.
In the engine sounds more like a mouse. They love it in there and it seems a bit small for raccoons, but I wouldn’t put it past the raccoons to open the cans for the mice. ????????????♀️
I’m stuck on the fact that Kid 1 didn’t even hesitate at “bobcats”, she just went to take care of business!
Exactly 😆
Food!
Thank you. That was terrifying. Maybe horror should be your next genre!!
Forehead slap. Texas doesn’t teach basic animals? The raccoons just knocked our barrel shaped dispenser over and scattered the food. Said raccoons have been trapped and introduced to “swimming lessons” in our pond.
I believe your “everyday” life is the impetus for many of your stories. It’s fun to see what goes on at your house. LOL!!
Love this! Bobcats to foxes and lovely stinky squirrels. How adorable… I mean horrid, just horrid. Made me smile. Thank you so much!
Thank you for that delightful little slice of life.
So cute! Thanks for the smile today.
LOL, bobcats….sigh…I blame our education system.
I see your adorable fluffy thieving neighbors and raise you eight legged demons from hell.
I’d trade you so hard.
Omgosh… I read about this sort of thing, and logically I know it’s actually true… but you REALLY live in a place that has cute little foxes, and squirrels (even of the black and white variety), and deer… and alive animals that aren’t weird!!
In Aussie land the only animals we have are either stupid hopping creatures, or snakes and spiders…
I must admit the Quokka is kinda adorable though. ????. But Quokkas live on an island, and don’t come sniffing around at your back door being cute while you are having your morning cuppa!!! ????
I need to start a petting zoo in my backyard, and import all the cute creatures that Disney Princessss and House Andrews get to see regularly. Just hope the snakes don’t get them… ????
I think quokkas are living cartoons. So cute!!
Unfortunately most of these animals don’t come around for the morning cuppa either. They mostly just make trouble in the night. For me that means almost running them over while driving home from work in the middle of the night. Night before last I almost hit a skunk and a couple weeks ago I had a raccoon and a bunny try to commit suicide by car on the same night. I was able to break hard enough to stop for the raccoon. He then got very confused by the bright lights and ran around in circles for a minute before finally turning around and going back the way he came. The bunny was such a close call that I had to turn around and make sure he wasn’t dead in the middle of the road. The foxes are smarter. I’ve seen a lot but never come close to hitting one. I swear the owls are mad at me for disturbing their prey. I’ve had a couple swoop at my car. The only ones who really come out during the day are the squirrels. The funniest thing I ever saw was a squirrel trying to carry my dog’s kong (large hollow piece of rubber you can fill with treats or peanut butter) that had been left outside. It was almost as big as the squirrel and heavy but he was trying so hard to take it home.
https://youtu.be/hFZFjoX2cGg
For your enjoyment Squirrel Ninja Warrior.
Absolutely hysterical!
Hahaha, I can’t believe I watched that whole thing… but I was rooting for Phat/Phantastic Gus!
Bobcats. We have that kind of bobcats nearby. I hate it when they scream though. It really sounds human.
Fox IS adorable! I was really thinking my eyes needed checking because I looked at picture and thought, that is NOT a cat! The muzzle is too long. How is that a cat? Then I read the rest. Not cat. Good. Do not need to check if my benedryl is giving me hallucinations!
Love the pictures! Even here in where I live in San Jose there are all sorts of animals, squirrels, raccoons, possums, and even hawks. I have seen hawks eat their lunch in our yard a couple of times. I am always happy that they didn’t leave anything behind ????
I don’t blame the driver for not wanting to mess with the skunk, but that would mean they actually knew what it was, so…. Nevermind, it’s still on them because they thought it was a bobcat. ????♀️????
That doesn’t even remotely look like a bobcat. He must not have gotten a good look.
What are the names of those cute fox creatures in the Sweep series?
Do you mean the Lees? (Sp?) The Merchant Nuan Cee and his family? They are described as similar to “silver foxes” but also with feline aspects.
I do have adorable bobcats – check out this blog post for a mama and her two kittens. https://gardengrumblesandcrossstitchfumbles.blogspot.com/2020/08/julys-trail-camera-photos-dorothys-creek.html
Nice!
Here are my bobcats!
Awww how cute! Though why do you all just leave cat food outside like that? That’s a recipe for all the local wildlife to come running and eat it, that’s just common sense. I live in the suburbs but we regularly see deer here, in fact I’m worried for one of the fawns we see because he’s had a busted leg for weeks and has been limping all over the place. I doubt he’ll make it to adulthood. We’ve seen wild turkey, foxes, red-tailed hawks, and my sister just saw a coyote a few streets over the other day. We also have bobcats but I have yet to see any. Also occasionally bears are spotted nearby. This is all less than an hour from NYC by the way (where coyotes have been spotted in Central Park). Just because it’s the suburbs doesn’t make it any less wild haha.
I believe they leave cat food out because they’ve got a “socially awkward” cat who gets bullied by the indoor cats, as well as a neighborhood feral cat they haven’t been able to trap.
Foxes are cute, but kittens are cuter. I wish I knew how to send a picture of the four feral kittens that I am fostering for the local shelter. One week ago, they had not been touched by human hands. Today was their first unsupervised visit to the living room.They act as though I had given them the keys to Disney world see
They look like grey foxes. If so, they are the only members of the fox family that climbs trees. Just a heads-up in case you have any open windows near a tree (rare for Austin this time of year).
I am scarred by the carnage. ????
I needed to laugh today! Thank you. Still have a smile on my face. And snickering. I hardly ever comment, but need to say House Andrews is simply the best! Thanks for the comic relief.
We should send you baby moose, Cutest of them all ,, alas they are too quick for me, no pictures 🙂
Still I’ll raise you burrowing owl. Regular old owls live in holes in the ground. Watching those owls pop out of ground shake off dirt small running start flying off!
You’re getting closer and closer to Disney Princess status, just as soon as you teach them to sing and clean…
I love this! Thanks for making me laugh!
Thanks. I needed that so much!!!
Take the cat food up at night.
No Ringtails? Small Coatis that roam much of Texas.
Wish the foxes would come to our yard more…. you can keep the black and white squirrels. ::shudders::
Your daughter saved that man’s life! 😀
They are indeed adorable.
I’ll see you’re foxes and raise you a buck! (The foxes were really adorable though!)
This guy was hanging out in front of my house yesterday.
Wow!
So much carnage… 🙂
Oh the horror, the horror! I honestly thought the black and white squirrel would spray the bobcat (or fox) since it got too close to the back end.
I’ve been reading Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changling series lately. After I read the post I thought “well the changlings (in this case the wildlife) are taking over establishing their dominance.” 🙂
Where is House Harrison when you need them?
Snicker, chortle, guffaw!
Which one of you is a Disney Princess and neglected to share that information with the BDH?
+1 lol
Ok. Now you’ve got to share the ducklings pic
Also kid 1 just running outside for bobcats was hysterical
We got a shipment from Texas once. As the driver was talking to us for directions he said “OMG, I just ran over an armadillo!” We had to explain to him we don’t have armadillos in Ohio. It was probably a poor opossum.
That was funny, My first thought was huh maybe Texas bobcats look different from CA bobcats.
We live smack dab in the middle of suburbia – across the Bay from San Francisco. Lots of green space.
We have a whole pack of coyotes wandering around.
We’ve also seen Bobcats, ducks, turkeys, foxes and once my neighbor caught a mountain lion on their security camera.
🙂
We live on 5 acres about 45 minutes from Atlanta. We get bear sightings here even closer to Atlanta. My husband was checking the fans in my greenhouse at 10pm. This is at the back of our property which also borders 100 acres. He turns off the lights steps out and hears a snort. Freezes and slowly turns on his flashlight. Big buck standing next to him. Both take off in opposite directions. He gets to the house and sees my cat Basil. Basil isn’t allowed outside after dark because coyotes love cats and small dogs. He’s trying to pick him up but Basil doesn’t want to be picked up. This goes on for a couple of minutes while Basil tries to get past him and out of the garage. Then it dawns on him. This animal has a tail. Basil doesn’t. Picks up the flashlight. He has a big and now irritated raccoon cornered. Almost tore down the back door getting in the house.
HAHAHAHAHA!!
Reminds me of the time I was trying to lure my poor skittish kitty to come inside out of the dangerous dark. When he came closer i realized he was a young skunk. Luckily for me, he realized I was a harmless idiot.
Bless his heart. He was trying to do the right thing. Bwah ha ha ha. Thank you for sharing.
*giggling on reading, I can do see me doing that re raccoon lol
LOL, years ago I had a coworker who tried to pet our very friendly tabby Julius after dark. It wasn’t very friendly that night, because it was a raccoon and not Julius.
Hhahahahahahaha! Poor impostor Basil!
I put the driver right up there with my kids.
I was raised in a semi-rural area of south Texas and grew up seeing javelinas (peccaries), coyotes, possums and skunks. There were also frogs, snakes, turtles, mice and rats once we moved out of town to the country. We may have had deer, but I never saw them.
Then I went away to Houston for college and basically never left.
My children are used to cities only. When they were younger, I was used to excited cries of “Look, Mama, MUD!”. (That’s when you know you are raising “city kids”.) Squirrels were a big deal then and still kinda are, even though the kids are self-supporting adults now. I doubt they would have mistaken tiny deer for bobcats, but one never knows.
How old was that delivery driver anyway? Had he ever seen a bobcat?
At least your daughter was able to handle the problem. Deliveries are important these days.
LOL – though we are right outside of Washington DC (metro in walking distance) and still get foxes, deer, rabbits, etc. in a heavily developed area. The critters find a way. Though ID does seem to be a dying skill – I was the only one in my training group that could identify the different stinging insects from pictures (wasp, hornet, yellow jacket, honey bee, fire ant), my co-trainees had never spent any time in non-urban settings, made me laugh.
????????????????????????????
Been there, done that, had first aid kit too.
????????????????????????????
+1 Yep! ????
As Bugs would say, “Oh the humanity!”
Thank you for the smiles and giggles especially today on my 66th birthday and for introducing me to Jeaniene Frost’s work.
I was thinking of you the other day. My Ring doorbell had been charging all day and I took it out on the porch to put it back. Down at the bottom of the steps was a skunk, eating something it had dragged out of the garbage.
I told it “shoo!” It did the skunk version of flipping me off. I stomped my foot at it, and the dogs started barking, so it sighed and meandered across the street to see if my neighbors had any good garbage… I slammed the door so the dogs didn’t get out… finished putting the doorbell back, then had to herd the dogs back into the house and off the enclosed porch so they didn’t go skunk hunting…
Dodged that bullet.
Oh!! American foxes are different to our foxes ???? we get Roe deer, rabbits, hares, foxes, muntjac and Chinese water deer here every day, we do see grey squirrels but not for long as my husband is a Forester and it’s £1 per tail bounty but we definitely has not got those black and white ones ???? quite pleased about that????
We do have red foxes like you, but we also have grey foxes and, in the west, kit and swift foxes. Not sure which one those are but they’re adorable.
They are very cute, I’ve never heard of Kit and Swift foxes, how lovely????
Bobcats?!!!!! Someone needs some nature training with a focus on animal identification. LOL
So after enjoying this post. I realized that you might enjoy this YouTube video.
It was done by Mark Rober.
The video is called. Building the Perfect Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder.
Don’t know if you’ve seen it. But if you’ve haven’t you definitely should.????
If Jeaniene is in the NC Mtns today she is probably hunkered down waiting for the storms to pass and the rest of the wildlife will be hiding in caves, bushes etc.
LOL, too funny. It’s probably good he didn’t try to walk past the skunk. That might have impacted food quality. And skunks don’t always take hints, because why should they?
Thanks for the pics and the story. It’s probably not as funny for you, but they always make me laugh. I always love hearing about your animals. And, you certainly have a variety of wildlife in your area. In some ways that can be wonderful and fun, but with the black and white squirrel, maybe not so much. But, you always have such a great sense of humor about all of it, which is one of the things that makes your writing so very special. Peace and blessings to House Andrews.
HAHAHAHA…thank you so much for the laugh. I’m in Oregon close to the bad fires (had to evacuate for a week, but back home now, grateful to have a home to come back to) and I need all the laughs right now.
Lol…. so much adorable in this…
pS Jeanine Frost now has pics of her new puppy and her hubby in the dog cage with new little Leia … lol both of you… such wonderful people along with being amazing authors of fabulous books
The great House Andrews wildlife conservatory! LOL! I would freak out at the skunks. Thanks for sharing!
Adorable skunk, too, but I understand that you may have other opinions.
We used to feed the cats outside too. Like you. It was fine until the Coyotes showed up. And we don’t have anymore outside cats :-(.
I love the challenge to Jeaniene! Cant wait to see how she rises to the occasion.
Once upon a time we used to leave out Our cat food too ( even overnight) , had the same problem. Now we feed our cats twice a day and their waiting around the door, carport at those times. Each has their own cat dish with just enough food for each cat. If any food is still present after they finished we remove it.
Foxes beat ducklings, every time.
You’re feeding the whole neighborhood! Good luck finding a solution. It could be worse – this time of year we have to worry about Black Bears deciding they want any outside dog or cat food.
Yes! Thank you for the adorable photos. Now I need to see if Jeannie Frost has a blog like this I should be following… ducklings bathing in a cat dish? Yes please!
Zooterkins!
A small zoo a few towns over from where I lived fifteen years ago got two bobcats from wild life rehab places. (“Bob” and “Walter”.) You could see them up close, when they felt like being social.
Neither looked anything like a fox.
At twilight, a fox might mistaken for a coyote, depending on the variety of foxes and coyotes in your area.
But, yeah, a big difference between canine cousins and feline cousins!
Thank you for post, House Andrews.
Not to burst your bubble but you are more at risk for rabies from the foxes and black and white cat which post exposure treatment is series of gosh awful/ terrible abdominal shots than Ms Frost from ducklings. Pre exposure rabies shots are not that thrilling either. As a vet tech dealing with abandoned animals and wildlife rehab I was required to get every few years.
I don’t blame the delivery driver. I would have erred on side of human safety. Of course in my rural neighborhood you pull into drive and wait to be acknowledged by home owner or risk getting shot or bitten by guard dogs….
My dogs got rid of a persistent salesman who did not understand the word No three times and obviously could not read No Trespassing and Beware of Dog signs— four times.
My mother used to pretend she couldn’t control our shepherd mix when persistent salespeople knocked on our door. ????????????
(Gotta love a dog who gets the plan and runs with it!)
????
They are very cute! But, respectfully, feeding cats outside is dangerous for the wild animals in the area. Outdoor cats are destructive to local wildlife, and although unintentional, leaving pet food outside also encourages other wild animals to closely approach human homes and cars, a risky behavior. If interested here is one link with more information: http://www.wildlifelandtrust.org/wildlife/living-with-wildlife/four-reasons-not-to-feed.html
I see your cute foxes and raise you baby foxes! I haven’t seen them too much this year, but two years ago there were 3 or 4 kits in my backyard playing as only siblings can do. I recorded multiple videos of them. I think I missed the kits this year but I’ve seen a full adult the last few days. And a couple of deer.
And BTW, an adult mother fox has a very sharp and very loud bark. You can hear her easily through the windows calling the kits home.
Love the critters. My Dad did get a bobcat in his yard last year. He lives in SE Calgary. There is a large, wooded park called Fish Creek nearby. Foxes and rabbits are common in the neighborhood. Occasionally deer come up and ear the grass in the school lawn.
*snerk*
The angle of that second one makes it look like a feral piglet, but nothing there looks like a bobcat
Poor city kids
About a year ago my husband and I were laying in bed when we started hearing a weird screeching. My husband looks out our bedroom window and sees 3 foxes staring at our house. As it turns out the screeching was from a skunk that the foxes had trapped under our house.
Why 8s the skunk hanging out with the foxes?
The squirrls remind me of author Shelly Laurenston’s books where the squirrls are very aggressive to some of the shifters like Blayne Thorpe. Very funny books.
You’re thinking of honey badgers. She hasn’t had any squirrel shifters that I recall, but she has several books featuring honey badgers.
The Mane Squeeze & Beast Behaving Badly – early books in the Pride series. Blayne definitely had a squirrel problem! Squirrels were vicious wildlife but not shifters. Honey badgers had mean squirrels and house cats. Very funny series!
You have beautiful deers and cute foxes, and I have stone martens in the walls of my appartment. Why can’t I have the cute ones who won’t devour the isolation of my house and wake me up twenty times a night ??
You should try to SuperFeeder (http://www.super-feeder.com) it for fish and cat food. You can mount it anywhere and we built an additional cage around ours for added security. It comes with a timer so you can dispense as much food as you want as many times as you want. It is kinda of expensive, but we’ve had ours for 8 years and it’s still going strong. FYI we only purchased the dispenser as ours is mounted in dispenser/cage of our own design.
I’m just wondering if the delivery driver was a recent transplant from a Northern metropolitan area. Mainly because they couldn’t tell the difference between a fox and a bobcat. Or a feral pig(?). Or a black and white squirrel.
We’ve got gray foxes up north, too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they make themselves at home in fairly urban environments. Maybe the delivery driver just doesn’t go outdoors much?
It’s kind of sad how little exposure to wildlife some people have. I grew up going camping
and to zoos and museums. What kind of childhood neglects those sorts of adventures?
Gray foxes are pretty good climbers, even semi-arboreal. Don’t be surprised if you put the cat food up a tree and they still get into it.
Rofl. Bobcats!! I cannot stop giggling.
Thank you for the laugh
ahh! Public education at it’s best.
Cute photos! You might be able to install a Super-feeder cat feeder in some kind of elevated position that the cats could climb to. http://www.super-feeder.com/csfmodel.html
They dispense food on a timer. This page has installation instructions for various scenarios like needing to have the thing mounted. http://www.super-feeder.com/quickinstall.html
I have used mine on occasions when I traveled and wanted something to ensure the cats were covered even if the pet sitter couldn’t be there every day. They seem to be pretty sturdy and well designed.
*laughing* Great… *gasping* … love…it … *more laughing* Can’t type. *perfect post!*
We don’t have rabies in Australia……snakes, spiders, crocodiles in back yards up north, possums with REALLY sharp claws, poisonous jelly fish and blue ringed octopus, platypus with one poisonous claw, kangaroos that will punch you and have been known to disembowl people……but no rabies.
True story – my cousin (big, strapping country lad) got up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. Walked into the kitchen and disturbed a brown snake (very poisonous and very aggresive). The snake bit my cousin, my cousin killed the snake and then drove himself to the hospital for treatment.
Breed them stoic in Grenfell.
Would never feed the wildlife in Australia though. It just gives them an excuse to be rowdy and then they don’t leave.
Love your posts. Always make me laugh.
Do Aussies share these stories to keep others out? If so, it’s working with me. ????
I took a picture of a doe and her twins this summer. I live smack dab in the middle of a city with 3 million folks. With 2 major rivers, the deer just walk down the banks and wander through our veggie gardens.
It could be worse.
Up here in western NC, we have black bear.
Gotta love it!!! Wonder what else may be lurking about just waiting to dine on unsuspecting delivery drivers…heffalumps and woozels? Thank you for sharing – needed a laugh, for sure.
House Harrison has upped their game to a Fox heist! And the striped squirrel of course.
Love the bobcats! Also, would like to comment on a problem you said you had with tomatoes. Tomatoes are members of the nightshade family, like eggplant, etc. You might just have a sensitivity to members of that family. I know several people who do. You are so fortunate to have such interesting wildlife near your home.
???????????? Vicious bobcats indeed
We had baby jack rabbits living in our backyard this summer. Some of them are still around. They are so cute. I love the ears and the white cotton puff of a tail. They eat primarily clover, quack grass and dandelions. They didn’t touch my garden – yay!
Skunks are scary!
This sounds like a nice side-story for Cornelius! Anyway, the fox is super-cute, and looks like that house is the party house in the neighborhood!.
Oh noes! The black and white squirrel returns!
When my daughter was younger she worked as the Engineer on site. You had to drive to another town to get a flight out of the area. Cows I found out are idiots. The road leading to the airport had cows on the side of the road and when you where about to reach them decided it was a great idea to walk out onto the road in front of your car. You had to be really careful.
OMG!!!!! I <3 foxes. I actually have a fox tattoo on my right shoulder. That's too cute. Yes, feeding outdoor kitties poses a problem. When we lived in WV, we ended up feeding coons and opossums in addition to our outdoor kitty. 🙁 I wish you luck in figuring out the feeding. 🙂
Oh, man, I needed this dose of cuteness this morning!! Thank you!
Here are my vicious beasts in back yard.
oops
Yeah, cat food outside at night means everything with a nose and a taste for meat of any kind will be around to eat. Cats will learn to eat in daylight, so feed only while it’s daylight outside, pick it up when day ends. It would be easier to do if the food were contained somehow, such as spread on a cookie sheet, rather than on the steps the way it is. We, too, live within less than ten minutes of a freeway, and yet we have all kinds of animals that come around and eat under our bird feeders every night. We’ve had families of black and white squirrels, raccoons, and possums raised from what spills from the birds eating. Deer come and trample everything and irritate me. The actual squirrels are daylight animals. I think the key to getting all that wildlife is that it does get “country dark” without street lights. That’s why I put motion detectors on my outside lights. I wanted to watch the deer walk across the concrete walk along the front of the house at night. Drove the dog nuts for a while until he caught on.
I really have a difficult time with the driver thinking the foxes were cats, though. Has he ever seen a cat? I’m not saying foxes are welcome here, but we’ve had a few. Now and again, I hear the coyotes yipping out there. I resent them because they do take domestic animals as food. But when I see a fox, I just stop and look. I carry a strong flashlight and that tends to make skunks and raccoons and even rabbits scurry off, but possums just stand there and look at me. I keep the light on the possum and walk past it to my destination. I have watched skunks trundle along in the horse field, never bothering the horses or bothered by them. (They will, however, spray if they happen to raise their tails as they go under the electric fence. For some reason, they take that personally.) I think the animals tend to leave each other alone, for the most part. I do laugh when the chipmunks gather up seeds under the bird feeders and then run straight out of there, through all the birds eating off the ground, scattering them like bowling pins.
I am also amused that your daughter ran out to save the delivery driver from bobcats. The driver refused to get out of the car, but she dashed out to get that food! I can only imagine his horror at seeing her ignore those dangerous bobcats to take delivery of her food. Too funny. Thanks for the laughs during these days. We all needed that.
Hahaha, yikes, those scary bobcats and funny looking squirrels!
We went camping at Morro Bay with the puppies. We had their food in a XMAS popcorn can with the lid on tight. The raccoons couldn’t open it but rolled the can away and we found in the the ravine the next day.
For some reason I have been particularly fond of stink squirrels. There is a fart of them that travel through our property each night, the smell wafts in the bedroom windows. So far the doggie has been smart enough or lazy enough to not get sprayed.
❤️
Wondered where the wildlife was escaping to from the wildfires. ????
Love the foxes! And thank you so much for the Report
I wonder if they make an outdoor microchip feeder for small animals like they do for livestock?
Your life is infinitely varied
Thank you for sharing
but to run outside through the “bobcats” for delivery …
and yet again
The foxes wouldn’t scare me nor the striped kitty. The pig scares me.
Dealing with the squirrels and raccoons that steal the food for the stray cat we feed… sympathies.
Funny… BOBCATS! Not A Chance, lol.
To keep the raccoons from unscrewing the food barrel, screw a small self-tapping/wood screw through and perpendicular to the receiving threads and into the threads of the bottle. Now you can get it off to refill (with the help of a screwdriver) but the raccoons cannot, unless they’ve learned to use screwdrivers now. (I wouldn’t put it past them)
ps: You can add a second screw halfway around the rim to be more secure, but look out for man eating bobcats and evil black and white cats!
LOL! Way too many critters wandering in and out of your territory at their will. 🙂
Sounds to me like you guys need a good fence or you need to trim the trees close your fence (especially if your smaller dog keeps getting sprayed everytime he rushes out to challenge the ‘black and white’ squirrel). And are you feeding feral cats? Trying to wrap my mind around why your cats only eat outdoors.
Sending virtual hugs to you guys and all the critters. Good luck with the deadlines!
Grey foxes can climb very nearly as well as cats! Putting the food up high probably won’t be enough.
Now you have a cat/fox feeder.
It might help deter the black and white squirrel tho!
I was shopping one day and met a woman who fed stray cats in her neighborhood. She was trying to find people to adopt them instead of taking them to the shelter. What she ended up doing is buying rain gutters, put the food in that using it like a trough. She put the gutters up on cinder blocks so it was off the ground. Pretty smart, huh!
Lol. It would have been far more understandable if he at least thought they were coyotes!
Now that skunk…That’s the one I’d be worried about.
I didn’t know I could love you guys any more than I do, but this post made my day❤️ Cute and hilarious. I want to live there????❤️
I would just like you to know that I don’t really care what storyline you choose to develop, just please keep writing. I haven’t found a book of yours that wasn’t good enough to reread. Some I’ve reread more than once.
Thank you for hours of reading pleasure. I’m glad I found you.
I sincerely needed the laughs! Thanks so much for sharing the story and especially the pictures!
I sincerely needed the laughs! Thanks so much for sharing the story and especially the pictures! Edit: My internet may not be working super well and I can’t tell if the original comment got posted/sent. Sorry if this is a double!
These little foxes are truly adorable! I wonder what the delivery guy would have done if he’d been surrounded by the pack of very large, extremely vicious feral dogs that chased after me, my sister, and our two friends when we were 13 & 14 years old. There were no climbable trees, & we had no weapons. For brevity’s sake, I’ll just say we were saved by the copious amounts of food we left behind as we ran the quarter of a mile distance back to our friends’ house, in a blind panic. These dogs were definitely hunting us for food. To make matters worse, our parents didn’t believe us until farmers in the area told them about encounters they’d had with this same pack! Sadly, this pack wouldn’t have existed if people hadn’t dumped their dogs out there in the boondocks b/c they didn’t want them anymore.