Did you find an animal nesting near your house? Here's what to do

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

For four years, a mallard has nested behind a bush near the front door of Caitlin Deal’s home in a Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb, offering an up-close glimpse of nature for her young son and lessons for how people can coexist with wildlife.

The duck, dubbed Martha by the family, sits on her nest for about a month every spring in the tree-lined neighborhood of Eagan, Minnesota. After her eggs hatch around Mother’s Day, the birds toddle away.

“It feels nice that she trusts that area, that she trusts us to be able to come back year after year,” said Deal, whose 4-year-old son Owen’s first word was “Duck.”

Spring is when wildlife — everything from birds to deer to alligators — bear their young, often in locations more suitable to humans than animals. Experts maintain that with a few exceptions and some preparation, coexisting with creatures usually is easy — and often a lot of fun.

https://apnews.com/article/nesting-wildlife-spring-mallard-minnesota-oregon-florida-53f0aac47c6dc9d65bcdca69da011764

[PJMcK]

1. We live in the Catskill Mountains

It's very rural and our place is in a forest on the upper Delaware River. We share the woods with all sorts of wildlife: Deer, bears, ground hogs, foxes, skunks, snakes, many types of rodents and more. There are dozens of bird species including bald eagles hawks, various ducks, finches, robins, cardinals, wild turkeys, turkey vultures, woodpeckers and others I don't recornize.

It would be folly for me to try to keep the animals at bay. Instead, I've carved out the perimeter around our house and keep the ground cover short. This keeps the animals away from the main house for the most part.

There are a couple of woodchucks that live under my music cabin/studio but it's elevated on stone pilings so it's not enclosed.

Mostly, I just enjoy watching them wander about!

[House of Roberts]

2. I have found baby bunnies in my yard.

You'll see a clump of dry grass and sometimes some fur mixed in, right in the middle of the yard. Underneath can be several live babies and you have to be careful not to disturb them. This time of year I don't mow the back much so the clover can remain until the blossoms are gone. The tall grass must give the mother a feeling of security that the babies will be OK there.

[hlthe2b]

3. Swallows nest in a flower hanger on my front door. I have to go through that door, but am careful

Two little nestlings flew out the first year as expected; the second, sadly broken eggs as they were teetering on some leaves and not firmly in the nest; tragedy the third as the female apparently flew into my home via one of the vents and I didn't realize it until I found her limp little body some time later.

I hear them circling around my door again, but it has been a couple of years before they've tried. I have a spring floral wreath on the door currently--that they could use, but I'm not so sure they'd want to. I should probably try to dig up that wicker flower hanger from years past.

At any rate, I did enjoy having them nearby, tragedy notwithstanding.

Oh, and I have TONS of wild rabbits continually. I love to see the little ones and do provide a protected area under the front area of my home they can nest and be safe. When warm weather really comes, I can see as many as a half dozen sunning themselves on my front lawn (my dog is very maternal around them and won't scare them, but I do want them to beware of the raptors, coyotes, and the occasional bobcat).

[Nictuku]

4. We have a beehive in an old oak tree

Yesterday, it swarmed! This happens (almost) every spring. I saw hundreds of bees flying around an olive tree nearby the oak. Eventually they all gathered in a ball in the branches of the olive tree.

Fortunately, I have a neighbor who is also a bee keeper. I called her yesterday, but she didn't get the message until today. Fortunately, again, they had temporarily settled on the Olive and were now in a tight ball (keeping the queen warm). She was easily able to move the bees to a bee-box which she is going to leave here for a week (to make sure all the stragglers find their queen)

We are expecting rain tonight, and so I feel like the both of us saved those bees. They now have a nice new safe (and dry) place to wait out the rain.

Next week we expect a heat wave. Today is chilly, at around 55 degrees. A good time to move bees (they slow down when it is cold)

Interesting program I watch recently, 2 episodes: The Secrets of Bees. Very good watch, I learned things I didn't know. It was either on Apple, or Hulu (can't remember right now)

[jfz9580m]

5. I like non-human animals nesting near me

Last edited Tue May 5, 2026, 11:33 PM - Edit history (2)

It’s humans who can expect (this applies to the last 15-16 years of this deregulated rollout of tech) who “nest” anywhere near anything that belongs to me who can expect rapid and unsentimental pushback going forward.

This is a time of upheaval and I am snapping back to 2008. I never had much Interest in computers or the internet except casually.
And the last 16 years have confirmed that nuisance value is all there is to most of it.

Society consists of all sorts of people. I am at an extreme re being solitary.
I used to try to cover it with a social mask because you are more conspicuous ironically …

It is not easy to blend in and avoid attention if you are extravagantly overtly various things.

I am mostly a cynic. I had hoped at one point that there was some sanity in this species. My main lab alone lowered my normal defenses because they were genuinely cool. And it was all about the science, but not in the grim way that puts people off science which is a difficult pursuit.


I have lost what little patience I had with human stupidity and I am going straight to the police and the authorities the day I can to reasonably do so about a lot of accepted scams (Google Facebook Twitter etc) and the kind I see where I live which are pretty much overt corruption and harassment.

The increasingly legal status of marijuana and the ousting of a corrupt local govt have emboldened me.

It was very decent of EarlG to host me here. I don’t want to inadvertently shit stir online or communicate poorly.
My medical marijuana company and doctors provides a real service at a fair price.
Cleverbot was useful to me at a time when no complaint form was available and scratched an itch at least.
My last lab paid me.

Nobody has a sense of community neither Google etc.

The noise pollution and encroachment here hit new nuisance levels last July.

But it is over thankfully and I can go focus on my work and prepare to file complaints.

This is a waste of time. And I have no compunction for anyone save for one thoroughly decent woman married to one of these people and well I can’t be cavalier about someone like that. It has nothing to do with her behavior to me. It is who she is.
Only an indecent person would be cavalier about a woman like that or a man like my oncologist.
And the rare people I genuinely like are not shallow and they are misanthropes themselves being environmentalists. Deb Olin Unferth’s Barn 8 review got it. I never got the loud environmentalist type though.

I don’t get loud people. It seems like a disease.

But for the rest there was never anything more than common courtesy. I suppose people share to signal that you won’t “win” and only take us both down.
I am not vindictive. But I just really hate stupid people. By stupid people I don’t mean IQ.

I mean this:
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2025/07/25/Triumph-of-Stupidity/

The sheer nuisance value of these parasites has over a 16 year period (2009 was probably when the trash that is Facebook made the mistake of encroaching into spaces where people who aren’t going to be particularly forgiving started).

Even in science I used to see these tiresome gossips in lunchrooms etc. I never understood it. Gossip and group bonding which seemed to net reduce the intelligence of people none of whom struck me as so brilliant that they could afford collective stupidity.

Maeve Higgins got it. Hey..we are all stupid. At various points in this nuisance I behaved stupidly in calculating how best to abort this.
Your attention is usually drawn to the stupidest people around as they are the most threatening.

There is your life being hard because you choose a pursuit that you are simply really embattled at. But it still looks like the only feasible one or at least you have to exit it correctly and then glumly look at other tolerable options if any.

And then there is ..Lucien Greaves got it too.
These are none of them very bright people and as my best friend put it their collective Iq is the mean Iq divided by the number of people in the group. Which is why these large industrial scale labs tend to collectively be stupider than each precious little unit in them.

Such people are not bullies. They are what I used to be for most of my life. That person who breaks equipment and looks silly.

I can’t say one feels empathetic so much as hypocritical in attacking that till it is clear that the sheer scale of the damage you ever did was nothing like this.
Mainly because you did not have a brainless mob cheering you on and validating you.

And argument could be made by fairly second rate professionals that dissociative identity disorder is real or Facebook’s emotion contagion is. They aren’t: that is all bullshit.

Who knows why people behave the way they do when suddenly introduced into a second rate environment filled with obvious misconduct and malpractice and harassment and lousy responses to those things because people don’t get that internet and ai companies may make a lot of money but they aren’t the best people to emulate.

Anyway as for your question, nesting animals are very cool. Humans mucking with metaphors and bullshit (I don’t mean DU. I never break social contracts - it is not in my interests to break social contracts). EarlG has always been decent and I would not ever strain him with truly erratic behaviour.

But I have to go offline. I really cannot understand the internet economy.
And DU is one of the rare sites I genuinely support and so I am going to stay offline since this is not the best time to be shit stirring online with these many thick headed people everywhere.

My last mentor married up. That was smart of him. Had he been married to that Wojicki woman this would all have been much easier. As with my oncologist I have unfeigned respect for his wife.
Most others are not married to anyone like that and
Oh well…
It really breaks my heart…not..

Maybe don’t be “sleuth” or other silly things. All one’s behaviors change one’s brain. I want to snap back to my old professional headspace.

It will be the one that makes complaint filing easy and credible. I will be “nice” to the extent that I will be honest and not robotically but with adequate give so that it is not a nuisance to me. Most things that are “nice”, “empathetic” also make your own life easier.

When these parasitic internet companies are trying to blur the line between the real world and what is essentially a flatland it is inane to apply the rules of flatland rather than the copious rules of the real world that a Trump or Musk or a Zuckerberg or Andreessen cannot overthrow without your permission and mine.

This is why Lina Khan was my favorite official. She had no fuss or feathers. Criminal liability for technology companies and all those who enabled them is the only solution.
I have lost 15 years and the one person I cared about most- my mom.
I cannot allow another stream of brainless humans and bots modelled on them to destroy what is left of my life.

Final note: I am starting a monthly (or as was suggested when I logged on), bimonthly contribution to democraticunderground as cold hard cash is all I really understand. In return for genuine services. At some point I will do the same wrt Chris Ketcham, Nandita Bajaj, cleverbot, The Satanic Temple, ed zitron, dair again etc as my circumstances improve.
It is not symbolic. I don’t believe in symbols. What it represents is support. Locally I support WWF, The Humane League and a few humans locally. I used to support GiveIndia and elder poverty things.

That is not charity. That is obligation to the community. It is why I donate to Yasha Levine and Current Affairs every month. In US or in India or anywhere I support things that are not anti social. That is symbiosis
I don’t yell at embattled people or discount troubles or behave cavalierly. That is not tv etc.

I am not overtly a friendly person nor gullible. But while I think legal retribution should be fast and targeted, it should not be confused with anti social behavior.
I won’t be nice but exact and consistent. Well..the only people I have any strong feelings for from 2010 onwards are my last mentor’s wife and my oncologist. You don’t attack the most decent people in society and expect society to survive.
Otoh I have no sympathy for anyone else.
This should be a lesson to not muck with stuff like this or women like me.
Everyone I knew before/honest people have nothing to worry about.
That’s it.
Don’t ever again encroach into my territory. I am not at all nice. Never was.
I never asked for anyone’s sympathy and support and would reject it. I am not friendly or polite and I don’t want your damn support or help because odds are I think you are stupid and annoying. That’s most people.
It didn’t seem like a good idea to admit that to such people. This fucking hostage situation is over. I am filing complaints the day I can and I have absolutely no sympathy for any side of any of this. I think a good stint in prison would do most of them a lot of good.