Moose on the Loose
- Thread starter RD.
- Start date
No! You don't say!
You need to find better info sources. Groundhogs do actually hibernate, so naturally they don't "stock up" on food for winter other than eating as much as possible and storing it as fat. Plenty of critters stockpile food, but that is specifically because they don't enter a true state of hibernation.
I grew up with these animals in Ontario, but my current digs in Manitoba are too poorly drained to be very well-suited to them. I miss seeing them around; when I was a kid some of the local farmers actually paid a bounty on groundhogs because of the damage they caused with their burrowing. They are less common there now because of the influx of coyotes in recent years who prey upon them, but back then they helped keep me in comic books and movie tickets. Some of the farmers even gave us free .22 ammo to shoot them.
They are very uncommon in my area now, so I never bother them if they don't become destructive.
A number of years ago as I was leaving for work in the afternoon, I noticed a strange growth on one of my large ash trees and went to take a closer look and it was a groundhog clinging to the side of the tree about 15 foot off the ground. He quickly scurried to the ground and ran off under my shed. It was the first time I ever saw one in a tree.
Yah the groundhogs here are pretty big and fat. I saw a chunky one scaling the back wall with a paw paw fruit! You can't legally trap or move them in D.C. but you can in MD and VA.
Also have salamanders that come out in the heat of summer. They skitter on the walkway and sit on the a/c units enjoying the condensation moisture!
Also have salamanders that come out in the heat of summer. They skitter on the walkway and sit on the a/c units enjoying the condensation moisture!
I took this pic while I was at work last year, a mother and child reunion after mom had been gone grazing for several hours. The fawn had been tucked away in some tall grass, and got pretty excited when the doe returned. I was probably less than 4 ft from them. The bear photobombed the pic. Lol
One of our recent arrivals to this side of the Rockies. Not totally thrilled about it. This pic was taken a couple miles from our house, Rocky was sampling the bird seed in the feeder. Sounds like he/she came back the next night as well. I suspect that we will be seeing Bobcats in the city next.
One of the nice things about moving to Manitoba from Ontario was leaving behind all those dang raccoons! We have them here as well but they are quite uncommon; in Ontario they are everywhere. In fact, the city of Toronto was often referred to as having the highest population density of raccoons in the world! I'm not talking about suburbs, either; right in the downtown core, wall to wall skyscrapers, and folks like me who normally came in to work before dawn would see raccoons all over the place.
They're essentially like giant squirrels with genius-level IQ's, opposable thumbs and a bad attitude. Not an endearing mix if you have bird feeders.
They're essentially like giant squirrels with genius-level IQ's, opposable thumbs and a bad attitude. Not an endearing mix if you have bird feeders.
Yep, we have lots of raccoons in our area, my wife has about a dozen birdfeeders around the bakyard and wooded area and one morning we woke up to a few knocked over birdfeeders. Checked the trailcam and saw a pack of them came through like a gang of teenagers, climbed on and over everything, shoved fistfuls of birdseed into their maws, kncoked a couple over out of boredom it seemed, one climbed onto the tiny platform squirrelfeeder my wife keeps, and cracked the shelf right off due to his weight, then moved on the same direction they were headed to begin with.
There was a big raccon that would sleep in my parents spare trash bin. He/she would put the lid down then sleep. I went out one day to dump trash, lifted the lid up and a raccon the size of a medium dog stared up at me. I don't know who was more startled...I blinked twice and he was gone like a shot.
