Raccoons

 

Hello, I'm the OUTDOOR PROFESSOR from DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/ 

Here's your outdoor tip on raccoons.

With that white fur around its black mask and a stripe that runs from its forehead to nose, who can’t help by smile at the sight of a raccoon—a robber in the woods.

The raccoon’s toes are as flexible as your hands for it to grab and hold on to food—sometimes washing its meal off in the water—looking like a little person handling the food—only how many toes (or fingers) do they have? (I’ll give you several quiz questions such as this one.  Keep track of your answers and find the correct answers at the end of this podcast.) They have outstanding climbing ability being able to forward up trees as fast as they can go backwards.

All these things go together to make baby raccoons adorable to the average person and whenever a young one is found alone in the woods, it is sometimes adopted by a human family—“to save it.” Things go okay in the human environment until the little guy becomes a big guy who bites and has the ability to climb about anything thing in sight and tears up the house.

I used to work for a nature center outside a major city. People often came by dropping off their “orphaned” wild animals for the Center to take care of. Small raccoons were one of our biggest problems.  We would try to release them back in the wild hoping they would fend for themselves.  Unfortunately, this seldom worked.  As baby raccoons, they were used to being fed by humans and after we released them, they continued to hang around the Center.  They were furry little bandits that would run up to people, jump on them, and even bite park visitors out of frustration because people were no longer their submissive caretakers.  We had numerous visitors who complained about raccoons being overly aggressive and harassing people.  The unwanted guest raccoons required resources we did not have. There was little we could do but to take the raccoons miles away to release them or to keep them in captivity—a harsh lesson for anyone trying to rescue a baby animal in the wild—don’t do it. If you find a wild animal you think is injured or orphaned—don’t approach it. Contact your local wildlife or law enforcement officers to handle the situation.

Raccoons are found throughout most of the Americas into southern Canada. Wooded areas near the water are their preferred habitat. They make their dens in trees or abandoned burrows, caves, sewers, or abandoned structures. Opportunistic feeders, they eat fruits, nuts, berry, rodents, eggs, crayfish—or will invade corn fields—and specialize in trash cans if they are available.  It is not unusual for raccoons to forage around campgrounds for food and invade campers’ food left in the open. It is here their masks make them fitting robbers of any food in right. They like using #2 _________ to soften their food or to clean away foreign objects.

Raccoons are solitary animals exploring mostly at night.  The exception is that mother raccoons stay with their young for several months after they are born. A little over a couple months after breeding, the female givess birth to a litter of #3_______________young. The babies can stand after four weeks in age and start foraging for their own food after nine weeks. The mother carries young like a kitten and the young hangs around the mother until they are about one year in age.

They do not hibernate, but may sleep in their dens for several months during cold weather. Their vocalizations include growls, snarls, hisses, and screams.

There are three major disease threats provided by raccoons.  The most widely identified is rabies and surveys have shown it to be one of the top wild animals to carry this disease. Almost any animal can get rabies and it is usually fatal. The best protection from this disease for your pet is #4_____________. Symptoms of this disease are seizures, lethargy, and disorientation. These symptoms are very similar to the frequently seen distemper and only lab tests can properly diagnose. As with any wild or unfamiliar animal, never closely approach it.

When seeing a raccoon wandering and acting #5 ____________ with a runny nose and eyes, it is most often distemper. This is not a threat to humans, but it is a threat to our pet dog. This is an important reason to keep your dog’s vaccinations current.

A parasite in raccoons that can be a threat to humans is roundworm—a serious case can even be fatal. It is thought that the majority of North American raccoons carry raccoon roundworm in their #6 ____________. Human contamination is not likely because of the main cause is the ingestion of raccoon fecal matter that is at least 30 days old. This has happened in some cases where contaminated firewood is put in the mouth of a child or older person. It is rare to have this parasite transferred to a human, but it is another good reason to not keep a “pet” raccoon in the house. Also, be careful in disposing raccoon feces from a structure or around your house.

Raccoons are an important part of our ecosystem and do not deserve their historic position of a frontier hat or coat.  Despite being nuisances sometimes, they are clever and cute robbers in the outdoors.

Quiz Answers

1. The raccoon’s ____________ toes are as flexible as your hands for it to grab and hold on to food
   a. three
   b. six
   c. four
   *d. five
2. They like using #2 _________ to soften their food or to clean away foreign objects.
   a. saliva
   b. urine
   *c. water
   d. tree sap
3. A little over a couple months after breeding, the female give birth to a litter of ________________young.
   a. 1-2
   b. 8-9
   *c. 4-6
    d. 10-12
4. The best protection from this disease for your pet is ____________.
   *a. vaccination
   b. a large collar
   c. a neck bell
   d. distilled water
5. Seeing a raccoon wandering and ____________with a runny nose and eyes, it is most often distemper.
   *a. disoriented
   b. running away
   c. jumping in the air
   d. sniffing the ground
6. North American raccoons carry raccoon roundworm in their ____________
   a. bite
   b. breath
   *c stool or feces
    d. fur

 

This is the OUTDOOR PROFESSOR from DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/

Additional outdoor tips can be received by subscribing to the Outdoor Professor Tips on iTunes , Stitcher, or Google Play Music.  If you enjoy outdoor tips, you’ll also find an e-book at Amazon.com with a collection of the Outdoor Professor Tips.

 

References-Additional Reading

Raccoons | Fun Facts
http://www.yankeemagazine.com/article/nature/raccoons-fun-facts

Raccoons | Common Raccoon Diseases
http://www.yankeemagazine.com/article/nature/common-raccoon-diseases

Raccoon - Procyon lotor
http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/raccoon.htm

Nature Quotient.
eBook @Amazon.com

Outdoor Professor’s Tips: Exploring the Wonders of Nature
eBook @Amazon.com

Check out this episode!

Skunks

 

Hello, I'm the OUTDOOR PROFESSOR from DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/ 

Here's your outdoor tip on skunks.

Skunks are not aggressive animals, but a close encounter with a skunk in the wild usually raises some level of fear in a person’s mind.  Usually they will only be aggressive when surprised, cornered or when protecting their young.  The first line of attack for many skunks will be to growl, spit, raise their tails, and stamp the ground. But if you don’t heed its message to “get out of town” seriously, the skunk will turn, lift its tail and spray in your direction. Sometimes an overly-enthusiastic pet dog, even in an urban setting, may bring a sampling of this disgusting scent to your backdoor when returning home after a skunk encounter.

This powerful sulfuric deterrent against predators is a strong smelling oily liquid produced by the glands under its tail.  They are known to shoot this foul spray as far as #1____________ (How far do you think? I’ll give you several quiz questions such as this one in this podcast.  Keep track of your answers and find the correct answers at the end of the podcast). The odorous spray is mostly an irritant, but close range exposure can product nausea, headaches, and vomiting. It can be temporarily incapacitating.

Major damage is usually not done to the skunk’s victim, but the smell may linger for days defying attempts to remove it. This defense is so widely known that even most animals respect the skunk’s territory and give a wide birth to even a hint of the smell. The smell of the skunk’s spray is very unique but some describe it as being like cat pee and rotten eggs—others say burnt rubber.  Many think that they way to remove the scent from your body is by bathing in tomato juice. This is only true if you want you or your dog to smell like some kind of rare, but unappealing spaghetti dish. It is best to neutralize the skunk spray with baking soda (1/4 cup) and hydrogen peroxide (1 quart) with some liquid soap to break up the oil—you may experience some hair color change. It is best to just throw your clothes away as effective smell removal is not practical.

And here’s another quiz question for this podcast.  How far away can you be and still smell a skunk’s sent? #2____________ (You’ll find the answer at the end of this podcast.)

Skunks forage at night with opportunistic and varied feeding habits.  These nocturnal eaters find fruit, plants, insects, larvae, worms, eggs, reptiles and small animals. As they are immune to the venom, skunks can eat poisonous rattlesnakes when the opportunity arises. If the “fishing’s good,” they are also known to eat fish. They are most active at twilight with #3 ____________ eyesight (Answer at end.) and an excellent sense of smell and hearing.

Your next quiz question is “true or false.” Skunks will attack beehives to enjoy a treat o insects and honey. #4 ____________ (True or False—Check the end of the podcast for the correct answer.)

Skunks that you will encounter will all be various degrees of black and white (BW) colors. Most prevalent in north America is the striped skunk with white stripes down the sides of its black body.  Skunks are the size of a house cat and can have striped, spotted or swirled patterns in BW.

Burrows created by other animals frequently provide their homes, but they may also live in hollow logs or abandoned structures. In cold winter months, they may spend weeks in sheltered enclosures, but they do not fully hibernate. Females give birth to 2-10 babies yearly.

When you see a group of skunks together they will be call a #5 ____________ (Quiz answer at the end.)

Because of its defensive spray, the skunk does not have to worry about many predators Three years is the average life span of many skunks in the wild. Birds of prey such as owls are not very offended by the defensive smell of the skunk so skunks are scooped into the sky frequently. Other animals have to be very hungry and are usually warded off from the black and white creatures. Cars are common causes of skunks living short lives ending up as road kill.  The Centers for Disease Control report that about 23 percent of the identified rabies disease cases in wild animals are in skunks closely following 35 percent in raccoons and 24 percent in #6 ____________.

So when you encounter a skunk in the wild, your instincts are correct—make a wide detour and let the skunk enjoy its own territory in the outdoors.

Let’s go to the answers of your quiz questions. Hopefully, you kept track of your answers and now you can score your results.

Quiz Answers:

1. Skunks are known to shoot this foul spray as far as __________ .
   a. Three Feet
   *b. Ten Feet
   c. Thirty Feet
   d. One mile
2. How far away can you be and still smell a skunk’s sent?
   10 feet
   b. 30 feet
   c. 1000 feet
   *d. 1.5 miles
3. Skunks are most active at twilight with eyesight that is ____________
   a. excellent
   b. good in the dark
   *c. very poor
   d. color blind
4. Skunks will attack beehives to enjoy a treat o insects and honey
   *a. True
   b. False
5. A group of skunks is called a ____________
   *a. surfeit
   b. pod
   c. gaggle
   d. herd
6. The Centers for Disease Control report that about 23 percent of the identified rabies disease cases in wild animals are in skunks closely following 35 percent in raccoons and 24 percent in #6 _____________.
   a.robins
   b. snakes
   *c. bats
   d. gar

I hope you did well with the answers to the quiz questions…

This is the OUTDOOR PROFESSOR from DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/

Additional outdoor tips can be received by subscribing to the Outdoor Professor Tips on iTunes, Stitcher. or Google Play Music. If you enjoy outdoor tips, you’ll also find an e-book at Amazon.com with a collection of the Outdoor Professor Tips.

 

References-Additional Reading

Lifeform of the week: Skunks
http://earthsky.org/earth/lifeform-of-the-week-skunks-warn-the-eyes-before-tormenting-the-nose?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=e4e54e437a-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-e4e54e437a-394081361

Skunk
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/skunk/

Skunk Facts
http://www.havahart.com/skunk-facts

Nature Quotient.
eBook @Amazon.com

Outdoor Professor’s Tips: Exploring the Wonders of Nature
eBook @Amazon.com

Check out this episode!

Alligator Gar

Alligator Gar

Hello, I'm the OUTDOOR PROFESSOR from DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/ Here's your outdoor tip on alligator gar—frequently called the misunderstood big daddy of freshwater fish.

I’m not getting in that water! One of those gar might take my arm off! People are often weary of the toothy-snouted fish called the alligator gar. The prehistoric looking fish does have a mouth full of teeth, but there are no publicized cases of a gar attacking a person.

Of the seven species of gar, the alligator gar is the largest. These monsters can grow almost to 10 feet in length and reach over 300 pounds. They are an olive green or yellow with a heavily scaled body. Its mouth is filled with teeth and its snout is wide and long like an alligator’s thus giving it its name. It is believed that this species with a prehistoric appearance has remained largely unchanged since the dinosaur—they might even be called living fossils. They have a fierce look, but there are no recorded attacks against people. An important fact, however, is that their eggs are poisonous if eaten by humans. The prehistoric ancestors of this giant fish used to live throughout the world, but today gar inhabit only North and Central America. You will find them in much of the southeast coastal United States. They inhabit waters from Texas and Oklahoma then as far north as the Mississippi and the lower Ohio/Missouri rivers--in addition to Mexico.

The alligator gar’s reputation as a “trash fish” is changing slightly with television shows like the Animal Planet’s River-Monsters .showing the gar as a sought-after fish by Texas citizens and visitors to the state. They are moving the fish from nuisance species to a species to be conserved. Texas is an important player in conservation of the alligator gar as it is one state that still has a healthy population that it hopes to maintain with a one-per-day bag limit. Biologists hope that future research will provide ideas of how to further preserve the species. Alligator gar have few predators in the wild, however alligators have been known to go after them and large fish will attack their young. You can label them as opportunistic feeders and they have been known to eat waterfowl, small turtles, and carrion. Gar do not eat substantial numbers of gamefish such as black bass as many people think. Studies show them consuming carp and shad as an important part of their diets with game fish being less than 10% of what they eat. This has been confirmed in Texas in popular bass lakes such as Falcon, Choke Canyon, Sam Rayburn and Toledo Bend that also have robust alligator gar populations. The real problem is for the gar that take about 10 years to reach reproductive age. This makes it difficult for an overfished population of gar to recover. A 7 foot fish might be 40 years old and it could take a gar almost 100 years to reach a record size of 300+ pounds. Short-lived white bass and crappie can lose one-third of their populations and recover, but the slow maturing gar cannot recover from overfishing.

Alligator gar inhabit rivers with their tributaries, reservoirs and backwaters. Brackish and salt water do not seem to bother them so you will also find them in coastal bays and estuaries. These toothy critters prefer large, slow-moving rivers with wide floodplains with shallow water for their hatchlings. Unfortunately, flood-control measures such as dams and dikes have changed their riverine ecosystems and have done much to eliminate their preferred spawning habitats. This has caused significant population declines across the gar’s habitat. Also, they have been victims of commercial and sport fisheries that have often overfished them. Alligator gar need to protection and support from the people who fish for them. There is still much to be learned about this ancient fish and additional research should help preserve this species. People have little to fear from the alligator gar.

This is the OUTDOOR PROFESSOR from DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/ Additional outdoor tips can be received by subscribing to the Outdoor Professor Tips on iTunes or Stitcher. If you enjoy outdoor tips, you’ll also find an e-book at Amazon.com with a collection of the Outdoor Professor Tips.  

References-Additional Reading

Nature Quotient. eBook @Amazon.com

Outdoor Professor’s Tips: Exploring the Wonders of Nature eBook @Amazon.com

Gar-Gantuan http://www.tpwmagazine.com/archive/2015/mar/ed_3_gar/index.phtml

Alligator Gar http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/alligator-gar/

Alligator Gar, Atractosteus spatula http://www.fws.gov/warmsprings/FishHatchery/species/alligatorgar.html

Check out this episode!

Discovering the Outdoors #104

Welcome to Discovering the Outdoors—exploring the wonders of nature from the depths of the seas to the far reaches of the universe. Whether you are a nature watcher on here earth or looking to the skies, we hope you will find some topics of interest in our discussions--Devoted to all things outdoors trying to unlock the wonders of nature for your enjoyment, health and mental well-being.
I’m Richard Bothel, The Outdoor Professor, your host for the show. Each week I work to be your personal guide to interacting with our natural world—sharing with you some of the most interesting and relevant news from our daily blog: DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/blog.
I’m starting the new year sharing some posting from the Internet that I hope will be of interest to you. Each week I review the hundreds of postings relating to the outdoors and present a digest of them for you with summary postings. You may not agree with me as to the importance of some topics, but hopefully you will find several that interest you. A few of the most recent include:

• Earth closest to sun on January 2
• Fossil find sheds light on duck-billed dinosaurs
• Loud, very close lightning strike
• What’s a safe distance between us and an exploding star?
• How do snowflakes get their shape?
• Here’s Your Chance to Farm on the Remotest Island on Earth
• Mosquito-Borne Zika Virus: What Travelers Need to Know
• GMO Labeling Laws Face Off Against Big Food
• Is El Niño at its peak?
• Horseshoe crab populations in decline as Big Pharma snatches half a million each year
• Snow Lore 101 (How much snow will we have?)

I hope some of these topics sound interesting and you will read or listen to some of these articles if you have not already had a chance to have done so. Leave your comments on blog postings and feel free to email me your ideas for additional topics that you would like to see us cover. I’d be very interested in your ideas about guests you would like me to interview for the show.
Please be sure to check our blog for the new Kayaker of the Week picture. Each week we feature the picture of a kayaker and we would appreciate your comments. If you happen to know the kayaker in the picture, please post a hello. And if you or someone you know would like to be considered to be our weekly kayaker, please send a photo to kayaker@discoveringtheoutdoors.com.
Keep track of daily outdoor news by visiting our blog at DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/blog / And please like our Facebook Page--Discovering the Outdoors and visit the Outdoor professor page. Additional outdoor tips can be received by subscribing to the Outdoor Professor Tips on iTunes or Stitcher. If you enjoy outdoor tips, you’ll also find an e-book at Amazon.com with a collection of outdoor tips.

Check out this episode!

Discovering the Outdoors #104

Welcome to Discovering the Outdoors—exploring the wonders of nature from the depths of the seas to the far reaches of the universe. Whether you are a nature watcher on here earth or looking to the skies, we hope you will find some topics of interest in our discussions--Devoted to all things outdoors trying to unlock the wonders of nature for your enjoyment, health and mental well-being.
I’m Richard Bothel, The Outdoor Professor, your host for the show. Each week I work to be your personal guide to interacting with our natural world—sharing with you some of the most interesting and relevant news from our daily blog: DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/blog.
I’m starting the new year sharing some posting from the Internet that I hope will be of interest to you. Each week I review the hundreds of postings relating to the outdoors and present a digest of them for you with summary postings. You may not agree with me as to the importance of some topics, but hopefully you will find several that interest you. A few of the most recent include:

• Earth closest to sun on January 2
• Fossil find sheds light on duck-billed dinosaurs
• Loud, very close lightning strike
• What’s a safe distance between us and an exploding star?
• How do snowflakes get their shape?
• Here’s Your Chance to Farm on the Remotest Island on Earth
• Mosquito-Borne Zika Virus: What Travelers Need to Know
• GMO Labeling Laws Face Off Against Big Food
• Is El Niño at its peak?
• Horseshoe crab populations in decline as Big Pharma snatches half a million each year
• Snow Lore 101 (How much snow will we have?)

I hope some of these topics sound interesting and you will read or listen to some of these articles if you have not already had a chance to have done so. Leave your comments on blog postings and feel free to email me your ideas for additional topics that you would like to see us cover. I’d be very interested in your ideas about guests you would like me to interview for the show.
Please be sure to check our blog for the new Kayaker of the Week picture. Each week we feature the picture of a kayaker and we would appreciate your comments. If you happen to know the kayaker in the picture, please post a hello. And if you or someone you know would like to be considered to be our weekly kayaker, please send a photo to kayaker@discoveringtheoutdoors.com.
Keep track of daily outdoor news by visiting our blog at DiscoveringTheOutdoors.com/blog / And please like our Facebook Page--Discovering the Outdoors and visit the Outdoor professor page. Additional outdoor tips can be received by subscribing to the Outdoor Professor Tips on iTunes or Stitcher. If you enjoy outdoor tips, you’ll also find an e-book at Amazon.com with a collection of outdoor tips.

Check out this episode!