Through the years I have noticed changes in animal behavior. There was a time when you would drive down a country road and never see a crow standing beside the road. Now it’s a common occurrence to see them scavenging for food beside a busy highway. They seem to know that cars stay on the highway and pose no threat. Crows will eat all kinds of human food and they will peck through trash bags to get it. Last summer something was tearing apart our trash and I thought it was the neighborhood cats so I put out the garbage and waited. It wasn’t an hour later that I saw crows pecking away at the garbage. I bought trashcans the next day and they haven’t been back.

I live in New England and skunks are rarely seen in the woods but they are easily found wherever there are people. I have turned flashlights on them and they act indifferent about it. Possums are also found more around humans than in the wild and I have seen them and skunks squabbling over someone’s trash. I grew up in the country and I saw a few possums but now if you take a walk downtown at night you’re sure to see one.

More people are seeing foxes, coyotes, deer and moose in their neighborhoods. We lived downtown for many years and one Sunday morning I saw a moose step over a six-foot high fence and gallop down the driveway. What’s ironic about this is that a few weeks before I was up in “moose alley”, for two days, and I did not see a moose.

Around the campgrounds black bears can be seen looking for food. They usually are around at night but they have been seen during the day going through the campgrounds pawing through trash. There was a time when the sight of a human would send them running for the brush but now you need a dog or a very loud noise to get them to leave. A co-worker has bird feeders and the bears always seem to figure out a way to get them. He used to take them in at night but lately the bears have been taking them during daylight hours when he is at work.

The mother animals teach the young and they seem to be showing them how to live with humans. Most of these are the ones that will eat almost anything, skunks, possums, crows and blue jays. But eventually as those animals become less frequent in the wild then the predators will be seen more in the neighborhoods. What will become of this, we can only speculate, but we can clean up our act and try to get nature back to the wild.