Hi Deb,
As my exhusband & my neighbor & everyone else says...they are THERE because I FEED THEM! :) I guess so...
We have tons of squirrels & chipmunks, and cardinals & bluejays & mockingbirds that divebomb the animals just for fun, a cardinal once took a dive near our screen-window just because the cat was looking outside, the cat flinched, LOL!
There are hawks nests in the school chimney that's one block from here, there are tons of small creatures for the hawks to eat, we see one or two circling sometimes.
There's also a large male orange cat that sits in a tree in the alley and scopes my yard like a hunter, I don't like that, I love my little chipmunks & baby squirrels! Some of the squirrels here are nearly reddish when babies, almost the color of red foxes, and some are white on their underbellies, and I've seen an occasional black one, those are unusual, the black squirrels look almost like kittens from far away. I've seen that cat sitting on top of a chipmunk hole, lying in wait, and it also marks the grass around chipmunk holes, and that kills my grass.
If anyone doesn't know, squirrels and chipmunks can do a LOT of property damage, we have so many trees here, it's easy for them to get on the roof, we had to have a chipmunk nest removed from our chimney, and the squirrels had chewed thru our old roof shingles and created a hole and then rain came in! We needed a new roof anyway but that really pressed the situation a few years ago.
There was a time when we had a possum that visited the backyard every night, and the neighbor lady was concerned that it might go into her yard and her dogs might catch something from it if they got into an altercation with it...so I looked up rabies on the internet, and found out possums blood-temperature is too low to harbor the rabies virus, the neighbor was still not happy because possums are ugly, like big rats. I liked watching it with a flashlight at night, I'd scatter dry catfood in the yard, and the possum would go all over, getting every bit of it.
Raccoons and bats convey the most rabies cases to humans (from the outdoor nondomesticated animals, not talking about dogs), so don't ever approach a raccoon, no matter how cute they are, and they also have very powerful jaws & teeth.
This year, I decided I'm too old & tired to run from bumblebees, I did a lot of running from bees last year, now I just move my chair a little farther away, actually they don't bother me, they are just big & furry and busy doing their own thing, pollenating flowers and making holes in wood, some are carpenter bees, they make holes in the ceiling of my patio and leave bits of wood on the ground from the drilling. I realized they love the smell of anything fruity or sugary, so I try not to eat or drink anything that may attract them toward me. I should write a book!