Unplanned Urban Wildlife Habitat

She was a real beauty and appeared to be lost standing in my driveway, looking at me with those big brown eyes. I wondered if she needed directions, but before I could inquire, she scampered into the neighbor’s yard and—with a backward glance—disappeared into a small woodlot.

I have seen white-tailed deer in my yard before, but not very often and usually late at night. Even

though there are wooded areas nearby, my suburban neighborhood is dominated by a golf course and jam-packed with houses—most with fenced yards and many with swimming pools. It is not exactly ideal wildlife habitat but the number of wild animals that share my little corner of the world is rather astonishing.

I suppose most of the animals I see are just passing through, like the box turtles I have been seeing recently. Last week I had to stop my car while a lady, whose own car was parked in the middle of the road, tried to coax a turtle up and over the curb—without touching it. She carefully balanced the turtle on the end of her shoe and tried to scoot it up into the grass, but it kept slipping off of her foot. I was reaching for my door handle to go help her when another person got out of his car and came to the rescue. As the line of cars in both directions drove away, I wondered if the turtle would continue his slow march to safety or whether he might turn around and drop right back into the roadway.

I got a firsthand look at the problem the very next day when on my morning walk, I found another box turtle with his nose pressed against the curb and his front feet clawing at the concrete wall trying desperately to climb into someone’s lawn. It wasn’t going to happen, so I carried him to a nearby planted area and pointed him in the direction of the golf course. It wasn’t ideal, but at least he would have a chance—unlike the turtle that fell into my swimming pool a few days later. I had to scoop him out with the net.

And speaking of the swimming pool, what an animal trap that has turned out to be. The squirrels have figured out how to dangle from the edge by their hind legs and get a cool drink of water. Other critters like frogs, turtles, lizards, and a few snakes aren’t as adaptable. Once they fall in, they are not clever enough to find the ladder or the steps, even if that is how they entered in the first place.

A few weeks ago I heard a frantic call from my wife, who had been out for her afternoon swim. I rushed out and discovered that a baby armadillo had been on the bottom step of the ladder getting a drink and lost his balance. As humorous as it was to see an armadillo bobbing around in our swimming pool (they are excellent swimmers, that is how they have expanded their range so quickly), my wife grabbed the net and deposited him in the bushes with his buddies and they went scampering off.

For the most part, I enjoy sharing my yard with the local wildlife But every once in a while my patience is tested—like when the peaches disappeared off of our tree. Last week, our small tree was so laden with a dozen or so peaches that I had to place some boards under the branches to prop them up. They were beautiful—fuzzy, reddish orange, and plump. They were a little on the hard side so we were waiting for them to ripen. But we waited too long. A few days ago, they disappeared—every last one of them.

“It was the deer,” my wife said. Her evidence was the nibbled leaves on the branches that had once held the fruit—branches that were much too high off the ground to have been eaten by a rabbit. But what had the deer done with the peaches? Had she single-handedly eaten a dozen peaches, pits and all?

I don’t know what happened to the peaches, but everyone who knows my wife knows how seriously she takes her garden. If that deer knows what’s good for her, she will steer clear of my yard for a while. There’s a big, deep pond in my back yard and if she falls in I might not be able to save her.