Mission Inn Museum showcases Frank Miller artifacts at new airport venue, Riverside introduces outdoor NFL viewing at the Farmhouse Collective, and a guide to Riverside’s nocturnal backyard wildlife.
Previously unseen items from founder's collection, including piece of Amelia Earhart's plane, featured in gallery-style exhibition with UC Riverside student presenters.
If your bedroom window is adjacent to your backyard, you might occasionally wake to the glare of security lights or the sound of things going bump in the night. More likely than not, your intruder is a furry one. While some folks pay big bucks for an overnight stay at San Diego Safari Park to sleep with the animals on a “Roar ’n Snore” adventure, your backyard can be a nocturnal zoo as well.
When most birds and reptiles are asleep, a lot of mammal species are out and about. In fact, nocturnal mammals are not the exception but the rule. From my experience, there are three types of mammals you are most likely to encounter in your Riverside neighborhood or yard after dark. These thrilling three are the North American opossum, the raccoon, and the striped skunk.
Let’s start with the opossum, North America’s only marsupial. Marsupials are placenta-less mammals whose babies are born tiny. At birth, they must crawl across their mom’s tummy to enter her pouch (marsupium), where they will latch onto a nipple for nourishment and continue to develop for weeks. Australia holds the bulk of marsupial diversity in the world, such as kangaroos and koalas, but the New World has lots of species of opossums. Only one makes it to California.
Even though we might consider opossums relatively primitive mammals, North American opossums thrive in a huge variety of environments, from wild lands to the urban landscape. Didelphis virginiana (“the two-wombed creature of Virginia”) has a number of adaptations that help it survive and flourish. Particularly well known is its stress response, commonly called “playing ’possum.” Confronted by a potential predator, an opossum will involuntarily collapse, drool, and emit a foul odor from its hindside. Resembling a stinky, unappetizing corpse, the animal will remain in that state for 40 minutes up to some hours. In most cases, a predator will give it a pass.
Opossums enjoy a huge range of dietary preferences. There’s not much they won’t eat: carrion, insects (including roaches and ticks), other invertebrates, fruits, eggs, and rodents. I once found one rooting around in my garbage can—to our mutual astonishment.
This creature is particularly well suited for scrambling through trees and brush. They have a prehensile tail to help balance on limbs. In addition, the opposable thumb on their rear feet is equally useful in keeping them stable. Finally, Didelphisspecies are unusual among mammals for being immune to the venom of most poisonous snakes they encounter.
Under the right circumstances, the opossum’s pointy snout, long whiskers, Mickey Mouse ears, and substantial naked tail might suggest a super-sized rat. Mistaken identity is common, especially at night.
A warm spring evening a few decades ago, I was enjoying an al fresco dinner at a historic downtown eatery. Our long table included both university folks and East Coast visitors. Movement along a viny ledge overhead caught my eye. In a moment, I identified a rambling opossum among the leaves. As I spent a few moments enjoying the creature, my wife noticed I had dropped from the conversation.
“What do you see?” “Don’t look.”
Of course, my response got everyone at our end of the table to look up, eliciting gasps and a suppressed shriek. “It’s not a rat; it’s an opossum,” I explained. The table calmed down.
The raccoon’s scientific name is Procyon lotor, translating loosely into “the washing proto-dog.” The name refers to its habit of wetting food before eating. Although raccoons are part of the order Carnivora, they are omnivores. With a diet of roughly equal portions of small vertebrates (including eggs), invertebrates, and plant material (particularly fruits and nuts), one scientist called raccoons “one of the world’s most omnivorous animals.” They are fond of large seeds as well, skillfully opening containers of sunflower seed in my backyard. And yes, they scrounge through garbage cans for tasty tidbits.
Raccoons are highly intelligent, able to remember how to solve a problem three years after figuring it out the first time. They put their intelligence to good use; their forepaws work as skillful hands.
Raccoons naturally range from Canada south into Central America. They are relatively fearless of humans, although usually respectful. Nonetheless, I watched one brazenly mooching on a beach in Costa Rica. Outside of North America, raccoons have become well established abroad. Both escaped pets and purposeful introductions have led to self-sustaining populations in Germany, France, Japan, and elsewhere. In some European countries and in Japan, raccoon populations are exploding and becoming invasive.
The third member of the nocturnal zoo is the striped skunk, the only one that sometimes announces itself without being heard or seen. Its scientific name leaves no question about this skunk’s primary attribute: Mephitis mephitis (Latin for “bad odor,” twice). The striped skunk and the many other skunk species of the New World are members of the weasel family.
All but one weasel (the sea otter) has musk-filled scent glands as a means of communication, for example marking territories. Only in skunks have these glands evolved into fully defensive organs. The primary ingredients of a skunk’s yellowish, oily spray are sulfurous compounds called thiols.
Contrary to popular belief, skunks do not chase people. Generally, skunks will only spray as a last resort; it takes a week for them to replenish their glands. Nonetheless, if escape is not possible and a flipped tail is insufficient to deter a threat, the skunk will accurately spray toward a predator’s eyes at a distance of 10 feet or more.
I had a friend whose dog was forever terrorizing skunks, only to be sprayed again and again, returning to the house stinking to high heaven. Janet explained that she kept a substantial supply of tomato juice that she used in equal measure: one half to attempt to wash the spray off her pooch, and the other half to make herself Bloody Marys. Nowadays we know tomato juice and tomato sauce only cover up the smell a bit. The impression of odor dissipating is more due to olfactory fatigue. Oxidizing the compounds with a dilute solution of hydrogen peroxide is more effective.
The weasel family is part of the order Carnivora, but like opossums and raccoons, the striped skunk is an omnivore. Most of its diet is insects, but it will also go after rats, mice, and other small vertebrates. When fresh fruit or even corn-on-the-cob are available, striped skunks will relish those as well.
There are more nocturnal mammals in Riverside beyond the Thrilling Three. While I haven’t seen them in my backyard (yet), Riverside is home to bobcats, coyotes, gray foxes, badgers, spotted skunks, small weasels, bats, cottontails, and various rodents, all part of Riverside’s nocturnal zoo.
Norm Ellstrand is an emeritus Distinguished Professor of Genetics and former Director of the California Agriculture and Food Enterprise at the University of California Riverside.
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