Where's the wildlife?
I've been thinking on and off today about a question that a nature walk participant asked yesterday. He wondered why there wasn't any 'wildlife' in his small town (a historic town right next to ours). The rest of us looked at him rather blankly; the walk leader had just been telling us about seeing a bobcat near his house in another small rural town nearby, and talking about the wild boar (aka feral hog) he would be roasting later on that day, which one of his neighbors had shot after it had attacked a number of cows. Aside from these quite 'wild' examples, many of us have plenty of squirrels, birds, mice, racoons, etc. in relatively woodsy neighborhoods, where mature oaks, hickories, and conifers make up the fabric of the landscape. The questioner went on to say that he saw more wildlife around his former suburban home in Chicago than he did around his house in Pendleton. So where was the wildlife, he asked again? Another participant (new to the area, too) ...