Frisky Business

Spring has sprung here in North Texas. The trees are budding, the irises are blooming, and the animals are feeling frisky!

In my last post, I shared what I’ve learned from volunteering with a wildlife organization about how interacting with animals (even with the best intentions) can often cause them harm. However, there are plenty of opportunities to observe cute critters from a safe distance. My favorite way to watch wildlife is with my nature cam.

My husband gave me a trail camera for my birthday in October, and it is truly the gift that keeps on giving. I’m lucky to live in a place frequented by lots of local wildlife. Although I’m in an urban area, my property, combined with my parents’ property right behind me, combined with the empty lots next door equals a few acres of animal oasis, complete with many trees, bushes, thickets, sheds, and structures that appeal to critters of all sorts. We have squirrels, rabbits, hawks, opossums, raccoons, crows, gray foxes, skunks, and even a coyote now and then. However, we try not to do anything to encourage coyotes to stick around. Here are some tips for keeping your home and pets safe from coyotes.

There are lots of animal trails and burrows around our place, so I move my camera to different spots in order to catch as much action as I can. Recently, I’ve captured several fun videos of frisky foxes, amorous opossums, and other cute critters getting ready to start their families this spring. Here are a few of them. Enjoy!

This mama opossum is gathering leaves for her nest. Look how she holds them in her tail!

A striped skunk visited a few times.

After we saw the skunk, I put my little metal skunk in front of the camera, hoping to get a photo of the real one with it.

At first, everyone EXCEPT the skunk was curious about the metal critter.

Although some were more rude to it than others…

Finally, the skunk returned, and I got my photo of them together.

The chase is on! This amorous opossum is feeling frisky!

This fox definitely has a spring in its step.

And here are some spirited squirrels.

But the most exciting news I have to share this spring is that the fox we call Finley is pregnant! Finley was born here last year, so I’ve had the pleasure of watching her grow up. She and her mate, Frisky (seen previously peeing on my skunk statue) are expecting their first litter any day now. I’m so excited! (And a little nervous.)

Here’s a video of Frisky and Finley together.

And here is a picture of Finley that shows her baby bump alongside a photo of Frisky when he heard the news that he was going to be a father.

I wish the happy couple the best of luck with their new family and hope I get to share videos of adorable baby foxes soon!

Happy Spring!

One more thing…

Since I started posting photos from my trail cam, I’ve received a lot of questions asking what kind we have, so here are the details:

We have a Tactacam Reveal X and the Tactacam Solar Panel battery. This is the only nature cam I’ve ever had, so I have nothing to compare it to, but we really like it. The photos and videos are excellent quality. We have it set where it takes two photos and then a 15-second video when triggered. It sends the first photo to the app on my phone. We have the lowest cost app plan ($5/month) so it only sends 250 photos. After we exceed that limit (and we often do) the camera still records, but we don’t see any of the footage until we go get the memory card out of it. We have two memory cards so that we can swap them out and always have one in the camera.

If you enjoy watching wildlife, I recommend investing in a camera. You might be surprised at who visits your yard!