A bird in the hand is worth at least one coyote

When my wife and I came to Cape Girardeau 24 years ago, we had no idea there would be so much wildlife to enjoy -- and to curse, at times.

Most of you already know about my years-long siege with the squirrels. And the raccoons. Live traps merely demonstrated how many squirrels and raccoons there are, even in the heart of the city. All those bushy-tailed varmints were waiting to move in whenever the trapped population moved elsewhere.

And there were all those deer. I can't think of a single neighborhood in Cape Girardeau that doesn't have at least one or two resident deer. But some neighborhoods have many more deer than that.

During the recent frigid spell, Missy Kitty stood up on the back of her living-room chair and looked long and hard at the hedge in the open area across the street. Soon we discovered why. One after another, six adult deer ambled out of the hedge, crossed the street and went to our back yard, which goes up a steep, grassy hill.

We could see all of the deer from our bedroom windows. A couple of the deer were curious about us, too, and came to the windows and pressed their noses against the glass. I can show you the smears.

And with the cold, cold weather the masses of birds have returned to our backyard feeders. Even a couple of bluebirds, which we haven't see for many months.

A new wild animal also appears to have made its way to our neighborhood. I was leaving to go to coffee early one morning when I saw what looked like a mangy dog in the street. By the time I got close, the animal had jumped into our neighbor's yard and turned to look at me. I got a good look, and then realized we have a coyote in the wildlife mix.

During the welcome warm days that followed the Big Chill, huge flocks -- thousands and thousands -- of blackbirds formed acrobatic clouds over the leaf-bare trees all around us. I'm informed that these are likely starlings, but sometimes other black birds join the frenzied flights.

These cloudlike formations of so many starlings are called "murmurations." Now you and I both have learned something new. I had never heard of a murmuration before. I'm glad to know there's a name for this phenomenon.

Now that we have truly figured out simple ways to keep the squirrels out of our bird feeders, we are no longer desperate enemies of the fuzzy-tailed rodents. Gray squirrels spend most of the day on the ground foraging for whatever the birds knock out of the feeders. We have, let's say, a fairly friendly truce. So far, no squirrel has faced deportation, even if our immigration rules are somewhat stern.

I quite frankly don't know how wildlife survives when the temperature drops to below zero. But it does. There are probably all sorts of things we humans could still learn from small creatures who don't have to do multiplication tables or sentence parsing.

For now, we are enjoying a mutually beneficial relationship with our wild friends. We hand out food. They find generously loaded feeders every morning as the sun comes up.

I still say the large deer population in Cape Girardeau will attract less desirable nomads someday. Like mountain lions. And what about those black bears we hear so much about?

Ask me how I'm getting along with the denizens of the great outdoors when a bear comes looking for garbage. For now, we're all doing just fine, thanks.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.