Thursday's Thirteen: Animals that I have seen around my home.

Thirteen Animals that we’ve seen around our country home:

1. Mice. The darn things keep getting into the house.

2. Rats. That’s something you don’t want to see in the house, but they’ve been here living in the walls and attic.

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3. Possums. Don't let anyone fool you these guys are ugly they look like big rats, as far as I'm concerned they are marsupial rats. And they've been eating the cats food, bit our chickens on the leg which killed the poor chicken from an infection later. Ugh, I hate possums. Two young ones somehow got into the house too. Scared me half to death.
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4. Coyotes. We hear their eerie cries almost every night. They’ve eaten my chickens, ducks and my cats too believe it or not.

5. Ring tailed cat. I saw one on the porch eating the cat’s food. It tore off when I turned the light on and looked out. They’re ingenious to California and it’s rare to see one. And here I had one eating on my front porch.

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6. Raccoon. I saw one dead by the side of the road. Sad.

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7. Skunk. They too like the taste of our cat’s food. I hate when one gets into the habit of visiting our house, they smell up the house something awful. Frabreeze can only do so much.

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8. Peacock. A few years ago I heard a weird call and went outside, and there it was a male peacock with beautiful plumage. It took one look at me and ran back into the vineyard that used to be here.

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9. Boar. It was a white male pig. Big sucker but lean like it wasn’t being fed much. It was running around slurping up the grapes that my landlord was paying to have laid out to turn into raisins back when there were raisin grapes here. My landlord even asked me if the damn thing was mine. Nope. I’m not sure what happened to it, but it disappeared.

10. Goat. I was coming home after I had dropped off my daughter at school and thought I saw a dog with a gummy sack on it head. I stopped the car and got out, but it turned out to be a male goat that had pulled out his chain. It took one look at me and ran hell bent for home. Gee, I sure scare the animals don’t I?

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11. Pheasant. There use to be a lot that ran around here making an odd coughing sound, but I don’t see them very much anymore.

12. Horned and Barn Owl. The barn owl nests on our pine tree out front and I've seen the horned owl roosting on a telephone pole dawn or dusk. I hear them screech or who. One was trying to catch a rat and kept flying into my daughter’s bedroom window. She said, she didn’t get much sleep that night because of the crazy owl and the rat.

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13. Hawk. There are a lot of birds of prey both small and large that hunt around here. One time when I was taking a bike ride I heard a hawk scream and I look up in time to see it dive on it prey. Last year while I was taking my daughter home from school we saw one flying with a snake gripped in its talon.