Like the fox last week, this raccoon came up the road from Oak Island, saw the houses up ahead and decided the woods behind our house were a better bet.
In six years of living here, it’s the first raccoon I’ve seen.
A neighbour told me he saw a black bear just down the road about five years ago. He figures it was just passing through, as he hasn’t seen or heard tell of one around here since.
But over 1000 black bears were killed by registered hunters in Nova Scotia in 2009. So they are around.
The 2009 deer harvest in Lunenburg Co., which has been increasingly plagued by deer ticks in recent years, was the highest in the province: 3,104. Many gardeners will be relieved to hear this news. But it won’t stop me from putting a deer fence around the garden again. I recently saw 4 or 5 white-tailed deer in our backyard.
Department of Natural Resources personnel examine roadkill to see what shape the animals are in. In the winter of 2008, they found that a high proportion of deer were experiencing malnutrition and starvation. So the 10,280 deer bagged by hunters across the province was less than the previous year, according to the Truro Daily News, as fewer permits were issued to hunters for antler-less deer.
