Call me enchanted.

The manatee Ilya who made the lower Susquehanna River his vacation spa the past few weeks is just another in a long line of strange animal sightings in these parts. It gives credence to the idea that should you be lucky enough to live a long life, you really have no idea what you’ll see.

Maybe it’s me, but I get a kick out of these animal stories. Earlier this year, we received a photograph of a snowy owl perched on the mailboxes at Canvasback Cove and later, the same fellow, with the puffy white feathers, showed up on a roof at Tidewater Marina. Of course, it hasn’t been that long ago, maybe 15 years or so, since a small whale showed up in the river off Havre de Grace and what the birdwatchers call “visitors” — non-native species like the aforementioned owl — are always showing up from time to time.

How about the young bear that roamed the Eastern Shore a few months back? The remarkable part of that story to me was how he apparently swam across the C&D Canal, unless of course he used one of the bridges, but then wouldn’t someone have seen him?

Then there was the hard luck beaver colony a few years back along Lily Run near Havre de Grace Middle School. The city government considered them a nuisance because, as beavers will, their dam caused flooding. A trapper was hired to dispatch them, much to the anger of some people, myself included.

My earliest recollection — or hallucination, as some people claimed — of a strange animal sighting was a snake with multi-colored bands that slithered part way out of a hole in a tree next to one of the homes where I grew up in Pennsylvania. It was a freaky occurrence. My mother looked for the snake, but he was not seen again.

So, would you believe, as I sat down to write this column Tuesday evening, the phone rang at my desk. A co-worker who lives on a farm was on the line.

“Don’t all poisonous snakes have triangular shaped heads?” she asked.

“I’m pretty sure all the ones I’ve seen did,” I replied.

“Well, there’s a big snake down by one of my cows, but before I blasted him I thought I’d check. His head is just round, so I guess he can live.”

In my teenage years, we moved alongside a lake in a nearby town where the other kids in the neighborhood and I did a lot of fishing. We were always pulling up strange looking fish, big shiny things with small heads, and black fish with white spots that looked like they had the plague or something.

But the most unusual fish in this impoundment were huge, six and seven feet long, maybe longer. On sunny days, from our homes, which sat on a steep bank leading to the water, we could see these giants with their backs just below the surface of the water.

I always believed them to be sturgeon, because they had shovel snouts and were way bigger than any carp or catfish we ever encountered. In the 1960s, according to a story and photograph in The Aegis, an 8 1/2 foot long, 300-pound sturgeon washed up dead on the rocks below Conowingo Dam.

It was from this same house by the lake that I ventured forth very early one Saturday morning to walk three miles to a local golf course where I had my first job — as a caddy. Walking along the face of an abandoned quarry, I spied four rather large, spotted kittens frolicking in the grass. As I watched them, I had the sense somebody was watching me, and looking up, I saw the unmistakable shape of a buff colored, furry form with an unusually long tail. It wasn’t any Labrador retriever, though, and while people have told me I must have been dreaming on my feet, I’ll swear to my dying day it was a cougar.

Where I live now in Fallston, we are periodically treated to strange animal sightings. My wife decided to turn our in-ground swimming pool into a lily pond about three years ago, and since then, the pool and surrounding yard have become home to more than 20 species of frogs. Some, my wife assures me, are quite rare and value the chemical free environment around our home. Three years ago, a pair of Northern Goshawks, usually not found this far south, nested in a pine woods separating our property from a neighbors, and raised one chick. I think the chick, now an adult, was probably back looking around last spring — he cried day and night for a mate for about three weeks but I haven’t heard or seen anything since. Perhaps he moved on, or perhaps he found what he was looking for and quietly settled down.

Like Ilya, I think most animals are adventuresome and if the conditions suit them, they’ll explore new worlds. My cement frog pond is testimony to that, I guess, a variation of the theme of build it and they will definitely come, sooner or later.

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