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Some of the wild & wierd (to British eyes!) animals found in & around the Corestore:




Deer are not common in Westchester, but a couple have passed through our garden recently...




All the girls say 'Cute! Bambi!'. All the guys say 'Venison! You hit it?'. :-)




We have goundhog... big, fat, rodentish - bit like marmot.




We are visited occasionally by a pair of raccoons, who seem cute, entertaining, and intelligent - but we don't encourage them; they can be very destructive!

A very cute raccoon page: http://www.mnsi.net/~remocoon/index2.htm




We've even been paid a brief visit by a coyote - again rare in Westchester but not unknown - they follow the deer.




Since I only got a useless pic of the coyote as it flashed through our garden, here's what one is supposed to look like!




We do sometimes see Opossum - very shy, nocturnal, the only Marsupial in North America.

More about opossums: http://www.opossumsocietyus.org/




Again a lousy pic, so here's a better opossum pic - with babies on her back!




Common or garden rabbits on the front lawn...




...and the back garden is alive with squirrels; lots of trees.




More often observed with nose than eyes... but we do have a skunk




Very pretty animal, this is what they should look like!




Small, fast, shy, always there but seldom seen - we have chipmunks.

More about chipmunks: http://www.owca.com/




Probably eats chipmunks - think this regular visitor is a Northern Goshawk




Last but not least, our big and very funky house centipedes, scutigera - originally a Mediterranean cave centipede, recent import to USA - moved into our district about 80 years ago. Undisputed top arthropod predator, they eat spiders, millipedes, cockroaches (haven't *seen* a roach since we moved here!) and small mammals. OK OK I was joking about the mammals.

Very funky but unwelcome; they're big enough to cause short-circuits in ancient computers (yep, *real* bugs!), and they have a venomous bite - no worse than a bee sting, but not good around kids. They tend to 'freeze' for long periods, then move at a rate that's not credible - warp drive; they literally disppear, and reappear on the other side of the room.

More about scutigera here: http://www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/th11d(5).htm