One of the "cuter" mammals...

There were animals fighting in our yard this week at night.  It wasn't that back and forth yowling of cats, with a big final scream to settle it so you can go back to sleep. More of a wild, scary Africa-savanna sounding fight.  OK, I'm exaggerating, but everything sounds bad when it wakes you up at 3 am.  I'm sure it was "just" raccoons.

Nova went beach-combing down at Alki when she was here on Memorial Day weekend and brought home a plastic bag of fragrant treasures: shells, wet feathers, stones, crab claws with pieces of crab meat still attached.  I lost track of where she left that zip-lock bag, but the wild creatures found it in the yard and ripped it to shreds.

Beach refuse must be worth fighting over.  So why don't they just walk down to Alki Beach and get their own stinky crab scraps?  Actually, I know why-- because city raccoons have a very small home range.  Why move around when everything you need is within a few blocks?

Each morning while I'm sitting at my computer they walk through the front yard. I recognize the regulars, like the one who had the end of of his tail cut off.  Like all animals, they have no sense of property and if it feels good and safe they just make themselves at home.  I know they can be a nuisance, but I enjoy watching them.

What else is new in the wild kingdom? These nice mornings the back door is open while I'm doing chores in the kitchen and the Stellar's Jay is training me to leave his peanuts on the gate. He sits in the plum tree making a racket, then swoops down and grabs it before the crow.  I was looking on the Internet trying to find out if crows are smarter than jays.  They are both members of the Corvid family.   

I know we shouldn't use human personality traits to describe animal behavior, but the crows are like street bullies, used to getting their way but wary of people.  The Stellar's Jay is more of a brash and quick thief. But all the birds in the Corvid family have astonishing memories and problem solving abilities.

Naturalists say crows and jays have languages of their own and are able to do tasks that three and four-year-old children have difficulty with.  So it's probably no big deal teaching a senior citizen where to leave their peanuts.

Here's what Mark Twain had to say:

There’s more to a jay than any other creature. You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure, ’cause he’s got feathers on him and he don’t belong to no church perhaps, but otherwise he’s just as much a human as you and me.