When the Neighbors Are Bobcats, Bats, and Bears

Welcome to Wildlife Week, an exploration of what happens when nature and home meet.

I was raised in New York City, which meant the wildlife I encountered near or in my home rarely extended beyond a mouse skittering around the kitchen or pigeons gathering on our back alley windowsills. Until I was eight years old, I thought sparrows were baby pigeons because they were the only two birds we ever really saw in Lower Manhattan. I dreamed of the country—free-roaming deer and foxes in the backyard—but because it was a fantasy, I never had to consider the reality of what it meant to share space, land, and occasionally shelter with wildlife.  

Now, in my late twenties, I’ve found myself living, for the first time, in an actual house and in a very rural part of the Hudson Valley. Eight-year-old me would be delighted by the encounters I’ve had with wildlife in the past two years and, honestly, my adult self is similarly ecstatic. But along with the thrill of sharing my backyard with deer, snakes, and even sometimes bobcats, this new way of life also comes with its responsibilities and its challenges. After all, to the local fauna, we are the invaders: digging into the earth for our gardens and foundations, running pipes, mowing the tall grasses where they nest or graze or sleep.  

Sometimes, as I’ve learned since moving to the countryside, this does incur payback—a return invasion into our homes. For me, this hasn’t meant a mouse or two in the kitchen. Instead, it’s meant a mysterious animal dropping in the attic, large enough to be from a raccoon or possum but with no visible entry point or hole large enough to fit said animal, or the red squirrels who nested in our siding one year and our roof eaves the next (why it’s always the red squirrels and not the gray who are this industrious I don’t understand). One night, I came home late to a bat careening around the house. To avoid being in the same room as the flying rodent, I shooed the bat into our sunroom and shimmied the window open from the outside while my dog dozed in her bed, blissful and oblivious. 

While bats in the house, squirrels in the siding, or mice in the kitchen can be a nuisance, we should have a sense of humor—and empathy—about the fact that it’s usually more unsettling or disruptive for the animal.

I’ve also experienced wildlife-related nuisances that come with a pleasant jolt of novelty or respect, like the rat snake that managed to tangle itself in my garden netting two years in a row. Terrified to face the snake alone, I called my mom (who also relocated from the city and conveniently lives two miles down the road) for backup. The snake snapped at us, recoiling and furious, understandably convinced we’d snared it deliberately. We had to hold its head down with a forked stick fished from the woods as we cut the netting away before it slithered off into the stone wall, off to continue its much-appreciated duty of devouring rodents, true to its name. After a skunk surprised my dog (or vice versa) in the front yard one night last week, they faced off, two snarling creatures circling one another, both with black fur and raised white-tipped tails. When my dog finally trotted back to me, I girded myself for a midnight tomato bath to rid her of the skunk’s stink. Amazingly, she managed to escape unsprayed. 

It’s been comforting to know I’m not alone in these challenges. All over the internet, people find audiences documenting their own (sometimes less-than-graceful) encounters with wildlife near—or occasionally inside—their homes. Last year, a California resident went viral for her tweets about a group of endangered condors that trashed her mother’s deck when she was gone for the weekend. Another woman’s TikTok of her chihuahua’s spiked vest for walks (to protect from predatory hawks and coyotes in the area) has racked up 1.3 million likes. Videos of bears cooling off in pools during summer—even a lifelong friendship between a local deer and golden retriever—bring in enough viewers to make the news. For those of us who have chosen to build or buy homes in more rural areas with robust wildlife populations, these unique encounters may happen in real life, and sometimes even regularly. But while bats in the house, squirrels in the siding, or mice in the kitchen can be a nuisance, we should have a sense of humor—and empathy—about the fact that it’s usually more unsettling or disruptive for the animal. The old adage, it’s more scared of you than you are of it almost always holds water.  

Besides, sometimes having a yard that doubles as living, hunting, or foraging space for another species offers the chance to bear witness to some truly sublime moments. Last summer, for example, I watched at dusk as a black bear dug its clawed hand into my mom’s bird feeder and chowed down on the seeds inside. I love seeing the guinea hens usher their broods across the driveway each fall, or when the wild tom turkeys perform their mating dances in spring. Perhaps most awe-inspiring is our local bobcat. I first saw her three years ago at my mom’s house, distinguished by a busted right paw she held up as she limped across the yard. At the time, it seemed like she wouldn’t be long for this world. But last year, she popped up in my backyard, four small kittens in tow. Then, just a few weeks ago, I saw her hunting again, that paw still slightly raised above the ground. She’s made it at least three years on just three legs, sending at least one healthy litter of fierce, stealth predators into the world.  

When it comes to the more elusive animals I’ve been lucky enough to spot, I’ve been happy to observe from a safe distance in my home, behind a securely locked door. And for times when I’m feeling a little more adventurous, well, that’s what camping is for.  

Illustration by Gus Scott. 

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