We live in the country. From my yard I can hear cows bellowing, coyotes howling, and smell chicken poop fertilizer when applied to fields nearby. Within 0.3 miles there’s a barn going up for horses with 11 acres for their pasture. At 0.8 miles there’s a cow pasture in addition to pre-existing pasture about 0.2 miles away. Throughout the day and night there are critters passing across our property.
The other day as I was walking ‘out back’ with my dogs we intersected with a roll of armadillo. There was a chase. The big dog, River, lost interest soon. The little dog, Nixie, a dachshund was in the fight for good. She’d separated one armadillo from the roll and was working to send the armored beast to its maker. That was a struggle requiring human intervention.
With the clearing of more farmland nearby many local non-human residents have migrated to our property hoping to set up camp. Wanting to see how active our land is becoming with these displaced animals I put out two trail cameras.
After only a few days this is who’d walked past to be photographed:
