We are north of Houston, but live in the country about 4 miles as the crow flies from The Woodlands, Texas. We also aren't far from the San Jacinto river. There is lots of woods and river bottoms east of us.
We like our windows open at night when the weather is nice. You can hear the coyotes howl back in the woods. Husband says some of them are cydogs too.
Couple years back some young boys were cutting through the woods to go home, it started getting dark. They got scared and came up to our house and asked if they could call their folks to come and get them. They must have walked a mile or more. They said they got scared and came out when they saw a whole bunch of dogs or coyotes back there and came back to the road, they had been fishing back in there somewhere. I told them no problem and they did right. Their dad came and got them.
Also in the Woodlands, they have guys go in and kill wild hogs over there. I don't know if they are bad as they used to be, don't get the local paper but used to be real bad.
Most of the places are fenced where we are now, but when we moved out here 20 years ago, I had problems with wild cattle coming up in the yard at night. There was a humongous bull and he was not afraid. We hadn't lived out here long and it was all woods back then. My daughter and I were up watching a horror movie and a couple of them came up and looked in the window, we have floor to ceiling windows in the living room, like to scared me to death.
Finally I called the sheriffs department as they were destroying our yard plus I was afraid cars or trucks would hit them at night, there were 12 or more. Some guy called me one day and jumped all over me. Said he owned those cattle and I reported them to the sheriff and what was wrong with me. That he had hundreds of acres of river bottom and couldn't keep all the fences up and this was open area. I politely informed him that I was having my 2 acres fenced and if any of his cattle happened to be inside it when I did so they would go in my freezer. The next day I never saw so many trucks and horse trailers come out here and I guess they had a round up. I guess those cattle had gone wild and they had been roaming out here for years, they said they were real savy and had avoided being rounded up.
They got most of them except the old bull. About 7 years back they cleared hundreds of acres across the road from us and put in a new subdivision with houses from $300k to $1M out there. Wasn't many of them out there yet but I would see big old bull sometimes or maybe one of his descendents, I guess he was destroying their landscaping. Wasn't long before they finally corralled him or shot him one or the other.
I hear rumors of bobcats out here, may be, but I haven't seen any. I have seen red foxes on occasion. We also have pileatted woodpeckers, they are huge. And there is some kind of protected species ducks that land on a huge lake near here too.
