Gates Wildlife Control

A polite warning before disaster!

A raised tail is one of the clearest and most undeniable warning signs in the animal world. Before a skunk ever sprays it will usually do everything possible to warn a potential threat to back away. Stomping its feet, turning its body and especially lifting its tail high are all part of that message.

Watch as this skunk displays the warning perfectly. This is not aggression for the sake of aggression. It is communication. A skunk would much rather avoid conflict than waste its valuable defense mechanism.

Wildlife are constantly communicating through body language and behaviour. The more we learn to recognize and respect those signals the more peacefully we can coexist with our wild neighbours.

Class is in Session! This mother raccoon has been living at the bottom of a chimney with her babies, but because we can’t access the babies from below, we’ve been monitoring the family with our Reolink camera.

Last night, we captured something fascinating: mom carefully bringing her babies all the way to the top of the chimney!

Why? We’re curious too. Our best guess is that she may be teaching them how to climb and introducing them to the outside world, getting them ready for the day they eventually leave the den.

The babies are still far too small to climb the chimney on their own, so this definitely seems more like a training exercise than an escape attempt. Nature never stops amazing us.