Bring Us Your Bobcats: Website Unites Ridgefield Backyard Animal Fans

RIDGEFIELD, CT — You know all those photos you grab of bobcats buzzing your birdfeeders, deer staring you down through your home office window, and chipmunks just before they scurry beneath the brush under the shadow of a hawk? Now there's a place to share them with your equally animal-enthused neighbors.

Ridgefield, CT Animal Sightings went online this week. The organizer of the new Facebook group hopes her page will become the go-to online hub for wild animal sighting reports in Ridgefield.

During its short lifetime, it appears to be filling a need no one knew existed: In less than 24 hours of its creation, the new page had more than 200 followers.

Crazier still: Jessica Wade Pfeffer, the group's organizer, is not even a full-time resident of Ridgefield. She's the granddaughter of Mary Wade Rodier – founder of Rodier Flowers on Main Street — and over the last four decades has only just been a frequent visitor to the town, and her family's homestead on Ivy Hill Road.

But between all the Nature and the nurture, she's become Ridgefield's biggest fan.

"We've been coming up consistently for longer periods of time during the summer, and it was just really cool. I mean, it's always such a great sense of community here, and that's what we really loved about this place," she said.

The Miami resident said she had been mulling around the idea of creating some sort of online gallery of resident-contributed fauna photos ever since she had a "precarious interaction with a couple large-looking wolves" during a visit a few years back.

"It got me thinking… Where do Ridgefield residents go to learn about animal sightings here? Not just for general safety, but also to respect and share the love of these beautiful creatures we share our homes with?"

The mulling continued as no more than that, until a chance encounter with a concerned stranger.

"I was heading towards town, and a woman stopped because I was by myself with my baby and my dog. And she said, 'I just want to let you know there was a bear sighting here yesterday. And since you have a dog, you know, just be careful.' And then that's when the idea came to my mind."

Construction of the site was Facebook-trivial, and since then she has gotten "a ton" of private messages from residents excited about the new online group. Right now, the membership is "open," and anyone can join. A little later on, Pfeffer says she will close the group, to enable vetting of new members.

As for members of the four-legged, winged, slithering, and burrowing tribes, all are welcome.

"And it's not just bears or bobcats or foxes or deer, the common stuff that people seem to be seeing. There was someone who posted a bat that they saw on the side of the post office near Main Street, just a week ago," Pfeffer told Patch.

Along with that clearly confused bat, the group's page is currently home to owls, baby snakes, assassin bugs, and a video of a praying mantis eating a grasshopper alive.

Welcome to the Ridgefield jungle.