Cloverdale Wildlife

Tonight I tried to take the dogs out for a walk but only managed to go two houses away. There was a raccoon fight going on. I recognized it was raccoons right away because they sound much worse than a cat fight. One of my dogs, a Weimaraner (German hunting dog) was very excited, becoming even more so when one raccoon ran across the street. A second raccoon fell out of a tree. I'm not sure how high up it was when it started its fall. I heard it dropping and then saw it on its final ten feet. It hit the road with a good smack and then ran across the street. I saw a third raccoon also run across the street. I decided to continue walking the dogs when two of the raccoons ran back to my side of the street to continue their loud fight. My elderly Border Collie who is nearly deaf wasn't paying attention but the Weim was getting too hard to hold back so I returned home and walked them a little later on.

I've seen and heard raccoons around my house before. Could be the same ones.

I don't see the kind of wildlife around Cloverdale that I saw growing up in the late sixties. One time in 1965 or 1966 our dog cornered an oppossum around the compost bin. It hid in there between the bin and the back fence. Eventually it left. That's not as bad as a couple of years later when the same dog messed with a skunk. Peeyew for days afterward. It was common to spot deer in the field across the street or bounding across 182 Street between the trees in what is now the 5800 to 5900 block, now replaced by houses built in the early and mid seventies.

I never see deer anymore. I saw an oppossum run across the street one night when I was walking the dogs about 2 weeks ago. Fortunately I never see skunks. A couple of weeks ago we were at the off leash park at Clayton and a girl, about 10 years old yelled at her father: "There's a skunk!" We quickly looked around for our Border Collie to get her away from the skunk because she's the type of dog that would go after one and called and whistled to her to come back to us. Only to discover that Lacy was the "skunk" the girl had spotted. I've always said that dog is a little stinker.

The only skunks I see anymore are the dead kind in the middle of the road and I can smell them from three miles away. I sure wouldn't want to be driving the car that nailed that one. I used to hear coyotes howling at night, but haven't heard one in awhile even though I'm pretty sure they're still around judging by the lost cat posters I see tacked to telephone poles. As development took over around Cloverdale in the seventies, wildlife was pushed further away out of town. Sometimes they wander back for a sighting but mostly they're not hanging around anymore.