When you are out in the woods you often have to entertain yourself. It helps to embrace the wildness of the place. In the city, I was not as pro-composting as I am here. It was already stinky enough with the way New York does garbage. Here when I compost, it means fewer trips to the landfill and adding nutrients to the soil and mycelium network in the woods. I had no idea the practice would become a regular wildlife check-in, and a look at what lurks at night.
I started noticing traces of animals in the area, droppings, and tracks. So I decided to set up a trail cam to see who was coming to snack on the compost heap. It's now part of the routine.
Nearly all the visitors except the squirrels and crows come at night. In the videos, I have seen some typical scavengers, raccoons, foxes, opossums, deer, and possibly a coyote.
There was an opossum, I noticed that seemed to have paralyzed rear legs, and it would awkwardly pull itself. Sadly, I have not seen this one on recent trail cam video checks, and I did see an opossum dead on the main road in the past week and I fear it was our injured friend.
Some opossums I have noticed steering clear of foxes and another larger one that will feed alongside the fox with some moments of tension.
About a month after I set up the trail cams, I started noticing an animal that had fox-like features and was skittish like one but was much larger than the other foxes in the area. There are coyotes in the area, and in the western part of Virginia, they have been known to mix with wolves. I think there are two different animals like this in the trail cam videos, and it has been suggested that one might be a wild dog.
The goofiest-looking animal I have seen in the compost area is one of three regular raccoons. This one is quite large and moves around like Cartman from Southpark and I suppose that's what I would name him if I was doing that.
Stay tuned for further updates from the compost pile.
Lurkers of the Night