A little post about a chipmunk has kind of taken a dark turn, huh?

every time we expand out we create a new frontier

Indeed. I have a few friends who live in an area where mountain lion encounters are a common occurrence. Me, I've had three run ins with nature this year, nothing major, the most intense being trapped in my car by a wild turkey who cut me off in the middle of the road just would not let me go anywhere and didn't appreciate the size of the machine it was squaring off against. All three times, I was in the fortunate situation where I was less concerned about my safety and more concerned about hurting the animal. A bear or a buck or something gets near me though? Then I got a different kind of concern. Either way, I carry rocks with me for hazing whenever I go out now.

That said, we're starting to look at role reversals where what we once considered more exotic wildlife is starting to come closer to us, like coyotes and gators and deer and such ending up in cities. There's tons of reasons why, but one of the compelling parts of the conversation is that they're kind of running out of places to hide, what with urban sprawl and all, and cities offer plenty of opportunities for easy food and places to hide.