Exurbia, the housing beyond suburbia, is encroaching more on wilderness, and that means more animal-human conflict

By Mary Jane McKinney

Neighborhood Watch groups are typically on the lookout for crime. In my West Texas village, “If you see something, say something” has a different meaning.

The housing developments surrounding us on all sides have altered the environment and hunting grounds for thousands of animals we don’t usually see crossing our yards. We’re used to seeing deer, squirrels, rabbits, hawks, feral cats, and an occasional skunk or armadillo. Lately, it’s been like watching an episode of "Wild Kingdom."

Mary Jane McKinney

A few days ago, I spotted a large gray fox sniffing around a lantana bush 20 feet from my backdoor. I ran to the phone and called my cousin B.W. who lives on the property next door. A few hours later, he caught the fox in his chicken pen and shot it.

The phone alerts also work for nocturnal (possibly rabid animals) that appear in the daytime. A skunk or opossum spotted in the bright sunshine signals danger. At twilight, when nocturnal mammals emerge to hunt, we’ve seen a parade of porcupines, civets, and raccoons. The worst incident so far involves a rabid bobcat that squeezed through a small pet door in Currie Jones’s garage. The bobcat was chasing two dogs around the garage when sharpshooter Jones managed to kill the bobcat without shooting the dogs or plugging holes in his wife’s SUV, or his Ram pickup.

The collective sleep of our community is being disrupted by the nighttime screams of rabbits being carried off in the talons of owls. Some of the clever nocturnal creatures have managed to find a way under houses where they bed down for the night. How do we know they are there? We hear them, and many of them give off a musky odor, especially if they have been socializing with skunks.

All over Texas, residents in new developments have had to cope with coexisting with wild things. Exurbia, the housing beyond suburbia, is encroaching on more and more wilderness. Animals go where they can catch and kill food. A survival twist is that animals are acquiring a taste for human food. Why kill a small animal if you can eat garbage, pet food? When B.W. found the fox in the chicken pen, she wasn’t attacking the chickens yet. She was feasting on some leftover chicken casserole tossed in the pen for the chickens.

It could be worse. We haven’t seen coyotes, black bears, eagles, or feral hogs yet. And we don’t have to deal with alligators like Florida residents do. But the pastoral calm we enjoy has been disturbed. We’ve had to change our way of life. No more going away for the weekend and leaving pets enough food and water on the back porch. Now, we have a neighbor feed pets while we’re away, and put away the dog’s bowls when they are through. No more tossing scraps in the chicken yard, and no more leaving fruit and vegetables at a neighbor’s door. Now, we ring the bell and hand over the home-grown produce in person.

The irony in this situation is that the new homes being built on 2- to 5-acre lots in the wilderness are for people who want to live in the country, away from the stress of the city. We wonder how the new people will react to the new stress of dealing with wild animals. The city transplants often install swimming pools and ponds, both magnets for wild animals. Just as the natives here have a lot to learn about our wild reality, so do our new exurbanite neighbors. If the wild animals continue to multiply, we may have to fight fire with fire and invest in a few llamas and donkeys to guard our block. Now, that’s a Disney movie!

Mary Jane McKinney of Christoval, Texas, writes her "Plain English" column for Texas newspapers.