Kemper’s office is happy to help people unfamiliar with Maine’s animals understand their sounds and behavior. I was just a kid and I asked my grandfather what it was he took me out back to show me and could not have cared less, it just climbed up a spruce tree.” “The first time I heard a porcupine was the freakiest. “I’ve been at this a long time and most of the time when I hear those sounds I got them pegged,” he said. Pelletier, who turns 67 this month, has spent most of his life in the northern Maine woods and agrees there is not much to be scared of out there, despite the screams. “But then I process it a little bit and know it can’t be anything too crazy and then I smile about how nice it is to have critters out there.” “When you are sleeping and woken up by something so blood curdling, your initial reaction is to be scared,” she said. Kemper said whenever you get two of these large felines together, it can end in a screaming match.Ībbott is slowly familiarizing herself with the animals and their sounds around her new homestead, but admits to still being a bit on edge. “They are well distributed across the state but nocturnal and not easy to spot.”Īnother noisy animal in Maine is the lynx. “People don’t realize we have more fishers than they think in the state,” Kemper said.

Turns out the screams Kemper describes as “sounding like an old woman being stabbed to death,” were the blood-curdling screams of a fisher. “I was laying in my tent and something was sounding off right next to the tent and I just knew whatever it was, was going to get me so I was just going to hide in my sleeping bag figuring I was done for.” “Around 1980 I was up in the north woods camping at Pittston Farms,” Kemper said. Kemp’s favorite woodland mammal is the fisher, an aggressive tree climbing member of the weasel family. “She makes this god-awful shrieking cackle that is very harsh and very loud.” “It’s known as the vixen scream,” Kemper said. “Every vocalization has a meaning whether it’s territorial, mating behavior or an alarm call to let others know there is danger in the area.”Īmong the more distinctive sounds is the female fox trying to attract a mate with her version of a come hither Siren’s song. “These animals are not just yodeling for their own fun,” said Keel Kemper, regional biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Part of their doubt stems from the fact that fox vocalizations can vary depending on its gender, age and the time of the year. “People want me to listen to a recording, and when I tell them it’s a fox, they don’t believe me.” “I get calls about fox all the time,” Pelletier said.

Coyote sounds like monkey