Wildlife Populations Have Exploded in the U.S.

According to the National Wildlife Research Center, there are more white-tailed deer in the U.S. today than when Columbus sailed the great oceans. Thirty million strong and growing.

Wild turkeys are showing up in Staten Island and coyotes dash in front of taxis in New York City.

European immigration into the U.S. was bad for the bears. Settlers cut down forests for timber and farmland. By the middle of the 20th century, deer and bear were nearly extinct.

Then came the explosion. Today, the northeastern U.S. is still 75 percent forest, but humans built the suburbs and stocked their neighborhoods with vegetable gardens, fruit trees, and those metal and plastic cans that bears think are their dinner plates.

New Jersey's bear population doubled and tripled, and even T in the Sopranos had to have a mafioso soldier sit in his backyard with a shotgun, protecting his family from a bear.

Now Mr. Terry knows all of this, being the U.S. history teacher that he is. But nothing escapes his roving eye. Another "two deer with one shot," and perhaps the best of all, a coyote bolts, but can't escape Mr. Terry.

Two of thirty million deer in the United States.

Coyotes might escape taxis, but not Mr.  Terry.

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