>Now we've got condo squatters,gangs looting abandoned sub- divisions,and
>sundry post-apocalyptic behaviors flourishing as we await the
>arrival of
>hurricane season
Lions and tigers and bears too:
>Nature abhors a vacuum, and often wild animals
>will find an abandoned house and make it their
>home. Heaphy said that all kinds of Florida
>wildlife like to take over in the absence of a
>homeownerwhen the grass gets hip-high at an
>abandoned house, it's a haven for snakes. And he
>and his agents have stumbled into other animals,
>including panthers and wild boars. Typically,
>Heaphy said, those big mammals are more scared
>of us than we of them, but that's not always the
>case. "If you find a mother boar with piglets,
>you don't want to get in her way," he said.
>
>Grant said he'd seen hundreds of bats in an
>attic before, and a beehive so well developed
>that honey was dripping off and coming out of
>the bottom of a wall. Inspectors in Arizona
>sometimes run into skunks living in ventilation
>systems. He said probably not all of those
>instances happened in foreclosures, but they
>show how a neglected home can become host to
>just about anything. You can get rid of larger
>mammals, Heaphy said, at least once you get over
>the shock of finding a panther in the living
>room. But some infestationslike the fire ants
>he sees often in Floridaare harder to exterminate.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/home_improvement/4292218.html