"Whoa, careful - you should never approach squirrels because the nicer they are the more likely they are to kill you. Plague is a horrible way to die, here let me show you pictures of bubos from my medical textbooks when we get home." - my mother, to me, ages 3-17 (and yes - looking at medical textbook pictures of plague victims at the age of four will forever change your relationship with squirrels) When they ran the river homeless off, the new breed that moved in were less clean. They brought rats. Rats that would freak out when I rode by, and jump and try to scramble up my leg. One of them made it into my shorts. The rats brought coyotes, though, because coyotes are good at eating rats. So pretty soon there weren't many rats but there were plenty of coyotes. And they were the brave coyotes. Within a couple months the coyotes were taking dogs out of back yards in broad daylight. And then we have to argue about whether or not we're going to shoot coyotes in urban Los Angeles. All because we chased off the guys who were good at living in the river and replaced them with guys who were bad. Circle of life.A little post about a chipmunk has kind of taken a dark turn, huh?
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.