"Living with Bears" has inspired me to pose this question.

For those living in an urban environment, what wildlife do you normally see? We have lots of birds and squirrels and I see an occasional rat and mouse.

Jeanette Isabelle

I live in the far north suburb-ish area of Chicago

In addition to the typical urban wildlife, in the last few years Chicago itself has had to deal with lots of opossums, raccoon, deer, Canadian geese, a rising number of coyotes, and a few years back they had to shoot a mountain lion that made its way into the city.

I'm not sure if skunks are much of an issue there or not.

I used to operate a mobile pet grooming service in chicago north burbs: Skunks were like little salesmen for us. We were thinking about setting up a skunk rescue and breeding facility, but ran afoul of local zoning and wildlife laws.

Nothing to exotic but you can generally observe dolphins, swans, rabbits, foxes, buzzards (someone recently was attacked by one) and other birds of prey, common seals, deer, various gulls, avocets, great skuas, crows, terns, herons, owls, bats, swifts, house martins, pigeons etc. in the area.