Have you had any suprising Observations inside your home?
We usually have Asian house geckos, which while introduced are not unexpected inside the home (house is right in their common name), but typically the other reptiles stay out-of-doors. This friend was trying to Mission Impossible pasta though.
However we once had a toloc run inside from the back garden, but I did not have time to make an Observation, only open the front door so he could escape safely and quickly to the stone walls of the front garden. He was as startled as we were, and the dogs barked with indignation after the fact.
From time to time as I have mentioned before we have x’mahaná in our home, but those too are expected, the word house being in their Maya common name.
But once, we found a possum in the kitchen. (In fairness it was somewhat late one night during the pandemic, so I totally get the search for stress snacks.)
And this was in our laundry casita. I should have taken closer photos but as I did not quite know what it was at the moment, I was unsure of the advisability of approaching.
Has anyone else had any unexpected Observations inside the walls of their residence?
I didn’t get a photo, but I found a ribbon snake coming up my tub when I lived in Amarillo.
Some prior owner had sone some lousy DIY projects and we later found the sink and tub drains just dumped under the crawl space, rather than into the actual plumbing, so the pipes were open to all manner of critters.
The project has some rules about which observations count. I don’t think it matters whether an organism lives permanently indoors or not, so long as it wasn’t deliberately put there.
The same had happened to me before! I can only assume it came for the warmth? Since then I’ve never been surprised if feel/imagine something moving in the bed!
Otherwise used to get pioneering geckos (Lygodactylus capensis), particularly young ones, coming in to see what’s going on.
We put squash seeds, peanut butter suet, and/or dried mealworms on the outside window sill of a window in the kitchen for the birds in the fall/winter and when there are fledglings. For a few years we had some very brave and impatient Carolina Wrens who would eagerly come through the open window onto the inside part of the window sill if we were taking too long to put their food outside. They know they are about to get food because the window squeaks when you open it. Once when leaving the window open just a crack for airflow, one of the wrens came inside and flew around the high ceiling of the living room getting confused by the sky lights. We called him back over to the window by opening the window more to make it squeak. I didn’t get any photos or videos when he was in the house but here are some at the window: video1video2video3video4
We have also had a small frog and a small snake come under the front door (need to replace the weather stripping at the bottom). And multiple times tree frogs and lizards (skinks, anoles) have come in the back door when we left it open a crack. It is very hard to close due to house settling and when we are in and out a bunch and the weather is nice, we don’t bother trying to close it all the way.
This collared dove used to come and visit me regularly, perching happily on her (it was a female) favourite rocking chair and seemingly watching me while I worked. She seemed to actually seek out my company as there was no food involved… in fact, quite the opposite as at times she would also avidly steal my dog’s food from the bowl on the terrace outside. I wondered if she had perhaps been raised by someone as she definitely appeared attracted to human company. She tried to persuade her mate to also enter, but he remained strictly outside.
it was where our sump pump is.