this creature of ungod is called a weta, they are fairly common here, this one was dead and somehow had its back legs missing from the 'knee'.
this thing is about 80mm long too [the body] and they can jump a good metre or more

have any of you guys found a rogue lizard swimming in your pool or a possum in the roof, or worse...?

click for larger image

My wife has been feeding the local squirrels for some time now and they have apparently taken a liking to her because now the come up and take the peanuts right out of her hands.

I found one those hanging around my backyard once. They are big bastards.

There also some ungodly spiders in my yard and some cool falcons around here, but I never remember to take pics

holy crap! that's a monitor lizard?
<== what country are you in? your profile doesn't say.

A turkey ran through my backyard once, which is strange seeing as I live in the middle of the city. Some groundhogs live underneath my house. I wasn't there but one time my family was swimming in a river in the woods and a black bear rolled up on them. It took their food and eventually went away.

I almost walked right into a golden orb weaver spider in my yard. Bastard built a web from my garage to the tree, easily fifteen feet across. It's a big fucking spider.

I live in the country now and seeing deer, wild turkeys, bald eagles, etc. is not out of the ordinary. One day though I had a badger in my yard.

Funny story about the turkeys. I was driving down the road and my dog was causing problems in the car. I tried to deal with him and turned and saw that I was about to run down a couple of turkeys. I slammed on the brakes and avoided hitting them. One of them walked over and glared into the side window at me like it was thinking about giving me a piece of its mind.

They are similar but not monitor lizards. We call them Teiús around here
I'm from Brazil

had a whole nest of white-tailed spiders in the ceiling last year.

they don't build webs, they just run around at night looking for things to bite.

At my house we get possums in the roof all the time. Same thing with turkeys in our backyard (there's a very small patch of bush land just a few blocks away). But one time, when I was a very small child, my mother and I came home to find a sheep in our front yard. At the time we were living in inner city Brisbane, which is a decent size city; and there's not a farm for miles. To this day, we have no idea where this sheep came from.
Sometimes we get blue tongue lizards in our backyard, which would be cool, except our dogs attack them.

re white tails - fuck that! you must live in waimauku, that place has a heap of them.
i lived there years ago and woke up with bites all the time, i didn't know till the landlord asked me if i'd seen any because they had "an infestation" of them a couple of week earlier.

i took a very short video of a massive spider in my door frame the other week, i'll find somewhere to upload it and post it here.

ignore the adverts if you see any
http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=2sb7upj&s=6

they are related to the sydney funnel web, a truly hellish creature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_tail_spider
the last time i read up on white tails we only had the one species here, now we have two...

JESUS FUCK
I hate spiders, thank god i live in the US...
I clean/service pools with my grandpa and we find a shitload of little salamanders in like most of our pools this time of year. cute little guys but thee chlorine kills most of em :c
and we got a looot of turkeys around here. oh and deer. but thats nothing special so meh.

this one time I tried killing a spider with a katana, cuz it was 'huge' hahahaha it wasnt that big now that i think about it, but at the time it was the biggest son of a bitch i've seen in my room. needless to say a katana was a poor weapon choice, as i stabbed my wall 5000 times.

These guys turn up in and around my yard fairly often:

It's called a bush turkey, though it's not actually a kind of turkey. They're pretty funny looking, so I don't mind them being there.

Also, we get possums all the time. Those guys are everywhere.

I live in the Netherlands, and we don't have many nasty/scary/bitey things here. We do have foxes, hedgehogs, badgers (never seen one), deers, giant water rats, about 30 otters, hares and bunnies, and according to a urban legend, a giant cougar.

I think I'd poo my pants if I saw the German flag walking around in my yard. You are a braver man than I am.

Just wait til you hear their call:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9whehyybLqU

I saw a huge snake when I was camping once, presumably it was someone's escaped pet. Skill scared the shite out of me.

Also, some Buzzards have moved into the area, and I gotta say, I love staring at them when they show up. They're so damn powerful and majestic-looking.

I'm no fan of spiders, but the big ones don't really bother me, as they're always slow and harmless and they prefer to live outside. it's the slim predatory ones I hate, fuckers will bite you just for moving a limb in your sleep. until the last few years I'd only had a problem with the spotted ground swift spider--would never see it until I wake up one morning with bites. I'd be thrilled if instead we only had slow moving highly visible adorable and harmless tarantulas or some shit like that.

but at least we don't have snakes. ...not a fan of shit that hides and then ruins your afternoon out of nowhere.

I laughed way too hard at that

For the rest I'm siding with Henkjelle, though I've never seen any foxes around (nor giant cougars for that matter)

That's Belgium rather than Germany though.

Can you eat these things?

Although I personally never saw one, there are some puma and jaguar sigthings here, and once in a while some of them stray off the woods and end up getting lost in the middle of the city

Animal encounters aren't something I encounter very often in my very still and quiet suburb. I know because I'm outside nearly every day running and I hardly see a squirrel or someone walking their dog. I was attacked by a small dog once, which I was kind of able to outrun. I'm kind of nervous about being attacked by a bigger dog. I see some red and blue jays every now and again. I see a stray cat every once and a while wandering through my back yard.

Spiders... they are the scariest most awful creatures I know of. About a week ago I was taking mail out of my mailbox and I encountered one of these things just sitting on my arm! I basically spazed out. It's a wonder I made it through my last hunting trip without having a nervous breakdown, drudging through thick woods. I could see spiderwebs everywhere, but rarely saw a spider. Mind over matter prevails I guess.

There is a creek running through my neighborhood, and it's fairly well wooded. This means that during the warmer months (which, in Georgia, means most of the year), snakes are a common sight. Strangely, I've only seen neonates and adolescents, with one exception, and most of them have been harmless. I was out walking with my dog through the woods, exploring a dry creek bed, when an adult and very angry cottonmouth came sliding down the bank towards us, reared up, mouth open, hissing, and striking at the air. My dog, who was ranging a few feet ahead of me, was completely oblivious, and she was also not on a leash (last time I ever did this). I was screaming at her to run to me. She came to me, all right, but at a leisurely trot, and passed not six inches in front of the snake, which, miraculously, actually pulled back a bit and let my dog go by uninjured. We hauled ass out of there. Close call!

Another time I was running on the trail by the creek, and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw a small rattlesnake just waiting on the path in front of me. I gave it a few seconds, and when I decided that it wasn't going to do anything, I sprinted around and leaped over it. And this other time, also when I was out running on the trail, I failed to spot a grass snake until I was almost on top of him. I managed not to step on him, but he wasn't happy either way, and made this fact known by popping up at me. Even though I knew it wasn't a venomous snake, that's still enough to get the blood pumping!

Besides snakes, I've seen a few turtles around here, but not as many as you might think, sadly. Fucking fireants have destroyed a lot of the old turtle population in southeastern U.S. In any case, I've rescued three turtles from the roads near where I live. One of them was a Florida box turtle, which aren't supposed to range as far north as Augusta, GA, but there it was. Possibly someone's pet.

But the coolest animal experience I've had in the last few years was at my old apartment, which was in the city and pretty close to downtown. I was walking out to my car, when all of a sudden a fox goes trotting briskly by! What a cool animal. I wish I could have petted it, or at least got it to stop so I could look at it for a while.

Every time I read this thread's title, I think of the Lovecraft story The Thing on the Doorstep. Aaaand...


Ahhhh a Mi-go?

we actually have giant weta too, that one in my photo is just a regular nana one, they are like jumping bitey pinecones

From what I understand, they are not tasty.

Since I've moved into this place last year I've had a total of three bats get into my house. Almost always when I'm about to fall asleep too. The worst part is they love to fly upstairs and being a wheelchair user I can't just give chase after them so they kind of just fly around up there mocking me

Well..... Maybe it means something. Have they inspired you to do anything heroic/wear black tights?

iron man is a metal super hero

we get a few skinks around here, they even come inside sometimes
i plan to take my camera and grab some photos of the cute little buggers, i took a video of one a while ago but my phone isn't really good enough

*apparently they are nocturnal, i didn't know that! i see them in sunny spots on the footpath at this time of year
http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-animals/reptiles-and-frogs/lizards/cyclodina-skink/facts/

According to wikipedia, the Aborigines used to eat them.

Not surprising really, considering they would eat ants, grubs and all other kinds of blech.

^i was just about to say that, they eat bugs and weird stuff
"witchetty grubs" must be the oz version of our "huhu grubs" i'm told they taste like peanut butter!
our pet magpie [herbie] on the farm used to tear these fuckers up

Last September I woke up to a mouse rummaging through my trash can in my room, so I tried throwing a shoe at it every now and then. After a while of sitting in silence waiting for it to wander out from under my bed, I heard a loud squeak, then lifted up my bed, There was a fuckin snake under my bed. I moved all of the trash out of the way and grabbed a cardboard box to try to catch the thing, but inevitably, I pissed it off and had to kill it with a golf club I luckily had stored in the corner.

Had to eat everything you could find that wasn't poisonous or potentially going to maul you, back in those days.

Had to sleep and deal with camel spiders for a few months in Afghan, nasty ass spiders, and I'm a pussy when it comes to bugs period. They crawled on our sleeping bags and what not. Safe to say they ruined me ever overcoming my fear of spiders lol. Found three in one night as big as my hand, one continued to chase me after i smashed it with a mallet. I believe satan shit these things out and let them reproduce.

i found some cicada 'skins' [shells?] hanging out under an elk horn [plant] which is an odd thing to just find growing in the wild here anyway
the sound of crickets i like but cicadas drive me insane




camel spiders sound ultra gnarly, fark that, satan just shits out the evil aye

cicadas are relaxing to me lol. actually in the Chicago area theres like a thing where every 17 years or so this plague of cicadas invade for a while. it's annoying to all hell. dont know if anywhere else experiences that though.

So fucking sick of getting Cane Toads in my backyard.



Means I cant let the dog outside at night at risk of him playing with or eating one, which could result in him dying.
Apparently people get Eastern Brown snakes (2nd most venomous in the world) in the backyards around here too but thankfully Ive yet to see one.