Close Encounters of the Critter Kind

Pics are optional but please share your encounters with animals out of the ordinary.


I’ll start, we were sailing one day in the Shrewsbury River (NJ) in an old wooden sailboat but not the one I normally talk about, rather the one that didn’t like to float. A speedboat came blasting by and a lady was yelling, “Did you see the seals?”
So we all looked towards the small sandy islands for a seal. I had never seen one there before. As I am looking right next to the boat a large mammal rose to the surface and seemed to be huddling against our slow moving hull for protection. But it was no seal, it was a dolphin. A large dolphin too, this was no flipper but had to be at least 12’ long and black on top. She hung out for a while and then when the speed boats left the area headed off. I say she as a little later that year we found out there was a female dolphin that gave birth in the Shrewsbury. Dolphins did not normally come into the Shrewsbury.


One of my odder ones was at work. I was walking outside thinking about the code I was working on and looked into the woods where the fire road comes out. I saw two strange looking foxes. Now foxes are not too unusual to see but not too surprising. But these foxes looked young but as large as adults and with very long legs. Also they were yellowish and well the only yellow foxes I knew of were Fennec Foxes and they are small.

I relayed the information to the Dope and it was quickly pointed out that what I saw was probably Coyote Pups. :smack Googling for pics and that was indeed what I saw. You know for some reason I just never expected to see coyote pups here in NJ. I called animal control and they said it was nothing to worry about but stay away from them and don’t try to feed them.


My sister rescued a squirrel baby at one point and nursed him to health. He was very cute and playful but once he grew up only my sister could handle him at all. He bit everyone else. He was kept in a large ferret type cage. He was a bugger to feed when I would look after him occasionally.

I had a young opossum get into my apartment years ago. I grabbed both cats and tossed them into our bedroom, grabbed a broom and chased the little devil out of the place.

I was swimming in the gulf off of Florida and a small dolphin came up and visited us. That was pretty amazing. I was able to reach out and touch it. Also saw a wild Manatee down there and got within 20’ of it.

I have of course fed wild swans, they really are majestic looking. I have baby deer in my backyard every year without fail. I have caught a baby and adult raccoon, dozens of groundhogs, a squirrel and an opossum. I released all but with the groundhogs it was several miles from my house in the woods. I was trying to get rid of them. When I had a pool I rescued several frogs and one little chipmunk. I wrapped the poor thing up and warmed him up and then put him in a box outside so he could leave when he was ready. I was tempted to keep him for a pet but I did the right thing. I also rescued a couple of baby bunnies over the years. Once from our dog, that was recent.

You don't get too many big wild animals here but in my time I've seen stuff like seals and porpoises and dolphins but the strangest thing I've seen was a very friendly vole that just pretty much came up to my gf and myself while we were in Co. Clare. There are plenty of deer here but for whatever reason they seem warier of people than the deer I've encountered in the US. The most recent animal I saw that surprised me was a hare the size of a dog, i thought it was a deer at first and was shocked to realise it had bunny ears. :)

Are wild black rabbits unusual or out of the ordinary? I must admit I'd never seen black ones before spotting them the other day in my local park.





And "No!" it didn't have "greeeeeaaaaaat big teeth, and claws THIS long"! If it had, I'd have let my rotty loose!

Sounds odd to me ivan. I wonder if they were a feral pet bunny population. That would be interesting.

That thought did cross my mind, Jim. There are houses all around the park's edges where they could have escaped from. There was a pair of them and they looked a healthy size. Sounds more likely than a mutation of the usual grey-y brown ones, doesn't it?

I think so. But without seeing them who knows. NYC now has a large population of Black Squirrels and as they are cuter than the grays they have now begun to gain in numbers in areas where people feed the squirrels. This was a low occurring natural color but an easier supply of food has made it very successful.

I had an adult possum visit my apartment in Jersey City. I was boggled because I had expected that the feral cats would have killed all the possum there.

That's cool, I didn't know you lived in Jersey City for a while. When was that? I spent about half the week in Hoboken in the early part of 1992.

I was hoping for a few more posts by now.

I spent a year there, 1997-1998. Some good, some bad.

And resolved to never again live in a building that didn't boast right angles.

Oh man, one of those round towers?

No. Nothing that well maintained. Besides, they have right angles, where the walls meet the floors and ceilings.

This was a three story brownstone where the doors stuck because the doorways would be 89 degrees, 88 degrees, 91 degrees and 92 degrees at the four corners. Every door way. Every wall/floor juncture. It wasn't much - the two degree flaw was the largest, by far. Most were half a degree or so, but it was visible. Then the floor was not level. Nor was it consistently not level.

Proper right angles, now.

Let's see...I've seen what I think are fishers twice now in fairly populated areas here in the exurbs of Boston. Every year it seems the Boston Globe has an article about how fishers have re-invaded the area. I also saw a weasel in broad daylight by the side of the road a couple of years ago, and muskrats and beavers in (two different) ponds in my area. Muskrats can be surprisingly tame.

I'm not surprised you saw coyotes in NJ but I am a little surprised you're surprised. They've greatly expanded their range eastward in the last 100 years or so...I believe they're even found on Cape Cod now, are well established in Maine and apparently as far east as Newfoundland. I saw a couple crossing a frozen reservoir in broad daylight this past winter.

We have had wild turkeys stroll through our neighborhood, as well as the usual skunks, woodchucks and opposums and at least one coyote. We haven't seen racoons there lately but we have in past years, also the occasional deer and foxes.

I saw an osprey and a bald eagle in Western MA this weekend, and saw a road-killed porcupine out that way a couple of weeks back...I've still never seen a live porcupine in the wild. A co-worker who lives about twenty miles west of me has had bears in her backyard.