Wild in the City
Last night, as my Beagle-Jack was answering the call of nature in our back yard, we had an unexpected encounter with Nature, in the form of an adult possum, perched atop a chain link fence. These nocturnal marsupials are relative newcomers to Minnesota, and are just the most recent in a group of wild animals I have seen in the Twin Cities metro. I’ve also spotted deer near downtown Saint Paul, bald eagles in Fridley, and red-tailed hawks just about everywhere. What sort of urban widlife encounters have you had in the Twin Cities?
Foxes in Fridley along 694/East River Rd.
Also saw a fox outside my townhouse in St. Anthony Village last winter.
We get turkeys on the grounds of my office in Eden Prairie. I’m sure I’ve seen a bald eagle from 494 in the last few months as well.
There’s a few turkeys IN my office, if you catch my drift.
Foxes in Fridley. Nice use of literation, mnblrmkr.
There was a "herd" of about 200 Canadian geese at the park 3 blocks from my house in Chaska yesterday. I know geese are common here, but I’ve never seen that many grounded at once — they were thick! (ps – shouldn’t they be headed for Texas or something? It’s cold outside).
It seems hard to believe, but both the whitetailed deer and the giant Canada goose were once nearly extinct in America. Man-made changes in rural and urban landscapes helped both animals make a huge comeback, to the point we now worry about too many deer and geese.
Yesterday at 3:30, a bald eagle flying maybe 20-30′ above the ground, along Minnetonka Boulevard in St. Louis Park! I took my hands off the steering wheel and clapped.
There’s a bald eagle’s nest near my house so we’ll see them pretty frequently. Once,this spring,we saw a bald eagle eating a rabbit in our yard and several smaller one’s circling the parkway hunting.
I also have pics of cooper hawks and red tail hawks hanging out in our yard.
I regularly see deer and turkey in the area and a couple of years ago during the winter I saw a bobcat along the railroad tracks.