More Local Wildlife

Most of the wildlife we see in Sloughhouse and the nearby area is common. We do have Swainson's Hawks. I love them. They stay out in the fields and never come into my yard. My kinda hawk! Swainson's Hawks are endangered, so habitat where they live is protected. In the long run this is bad for developers and good for farmers. Like I said, my kinda hawk.

We have snakes. There is a den of rattlesnakes on the levee. They never bother us because the busy highway is between us and them. On this side of the highway it's more common to see a gopher snake or a garter snake. We like them. I especially like garter snakes and have been waiting for the one under the hay pile to wake up and start eating the mice that have settled there.

The most common mammals we have are opossum, raccoon, deer, and coyotes. We hear the coyotes every night but don't see them very often. There was a dead one on the highway a couple of weeks ago. It was beautiful. Sloughhouse coyotes are not ratty-looking. The highway is where we see most of our local wild mammals. Dead. A busy highway through a wildlife conservation area is not a good mix.

A couple of days ago I saw something even stranger. I was on Sunrise, nearing Jackson Rd. Waegell's strawberry patch was on the left and the Folsom South Canal was on the right. I could see something dead near the road, and even from a distance I could tell it was not a common animal.

I don't know why, but I can identify most animals that are dead on the road in an instant. This doesn't work when I'm in Texas or somewhere else, where I'm not familiar with the wildlife. In Texas, Merleen had to turn the car around so we could check out a strange looking dead animal. It turned out to be a jackrabbit, if I recall, its body twisted into an unfamiliar shape. There aren't many dead animals on the road in Texas, there are hundreds in California. In Texas they try to keep the wildlife inside fences so people can shoot them.

When Katherine and I drove across country a couple of years ago, we were baffled by dead things on the highway that looked like flattened fish shining in the sun. They were flattened armadilloes. We never did see one that was alive.

But, anyway, I knew what the animal on Sunrise was because I'd seen one dead on the highway about 8 years ago.

When I saw the first one, it had been dead for a while. It was in tall grass and I couldn't see the carcass until the grass dried and bent over. Bob and I stopped and examined it because the fur quality and color were strange. It had short legs and a fat tail. It looked like a deformed dachshund. It took some investigation to identify the remains as a river otter.

This is a North American River Otter (Lontra canadensis). They aren't very common even down in our riparian valley, where you'd expect to find them. Alice once saw a family of them strolling down the road in the day time near the Pierson house on the levee. Jim once sat and watched 3 of them playing in the irrigation ditch. Mrs. Peterson once had something kill her setting ducks and eat their eggs, and since that was near the time I saw the first carcass very near her house, I'm guessing an otter did that.

But I never expected to find otters on Sunrise, which goes through the drylands. There must be a colony of them in the canal. They mostly eat fish and crayfish, reptiles, frogs, birds, and mice. But they also eat fruit. This one must have been out to dinner in the strawberry field across the highway.