Mother Nature in overload these days....

[Katie]

Just some sightings in our back yard to lighten the spirits....

We have about five acres on the edge of a small village and surrounded by lots of bush. It seems to be a freeway for a lot of critters these days. While the mama fox and her kits seem to have moved on and stopped snacking on my chickens, a few others have become more noticeable lately.

Two days ago a white tail doe and her spring baby wandered through our back yard for about an hour. We have apple trees on the right side of the property and in the horses' pasture, so they were having a nice snack. Mama decided to jump a six foot log fence from a standstill, leaving baby to travel the fence line trying to join her. She wasn't panicking, but certainly wasn't going to be left behind. She wandered over to our fish pond, about fifteen feet from the house and gazed into it like Bambi for a bit, then started towards the electric fence, the one section we have. I ran to turn it off so she wouldn't get a bad shock, just before she decided to crawl through it. Phew! They wandered off through the pasture, while I snapped a few dozen photos.

During one of my insomniatic moments at 4am, the dog started barking at something in the driveway. Mama and baby were back, and standing on their hind legs, searching for sunflower seeds in the bird feeder. Too bad it was too dark for a good picture!

My three ponies are pasture puffs, round and not too energetic, so when I saw them galloping across the field this morning, it caught my attention...like I need a reason to gaze out over the field . Wait...it's a cat...it's a dog....no...it's super coyote running for his life! Our horses don't take kindly to anything resembling a dog in their pasture, so they were giving chase Ms coyote made it safely to the fenceline and to the other side....

Sometimes...most times...it is nice being a hermit and cocooning away here on the farm....

[Katie]

Oh, forgot to add the visit by the skunk in the same 24 hours....the smell is still lingering when we go outside.

[ajj1001]

and it was sounding so lovely till you mentioned the skunk. i have to make do with a bird feeder near the window where i sit. I spend the day seeing what comes to visit. It'll get busy as the weather continues to grow cold and food sources become scarce

[KBear]

Sounds nice! Reminds me of my critter sighting not too long ago..... So we had a rat in our garage and we have 2 indoor & outdoor cats. I locked them in the garage overnight to kill it, next morning I find the male cat crying to come in and the female wishing he'd shut up so she could kill the rat. Next night I put just the female cat in the garage, still no dead rat. Finally it came out of the garage a little one day and hubby stomped it to death- he didn't have any other way to kill it immediately. I was very disappointed in the cats, especially the girl cat, because she has always been a bit wild and a hunter. I've found dead hummingbirds, various other birds, rats, mice, bunnies, and she killed a mole one time (of course all of the above are left on the front porch, so she can show off her hard work.) The male cat, I don't know that he could kill something if he tried, he prefers his cat food- LOL

So, about a week or two after the rat incident, I'm sitting on the couch and see a big white rat run by the front door (we have a glass storm door, so we leave our wood door open and can get more natural light in and see out.) I screamed, jumped on the couch (yeah, not sure why I did that, seeing as it was outside and I was in) and yelled to my husband "I just saw the biggest freaking rat I have ever seen run by outside. OMGosh it was nasty looking." Hubby asks, how big was it. I'm showing him with my hands, it was about cat size. Hubby says, yeah that probably wasn't a rat, but an possum. In hindsight it wasn't a rat, but dang it was ugly like a rat and I don't want it near my house! It was pretty funny, as I was spazing out over it. LOL

[laid up doc]

you make me want to move out to the country, Katie!!! but.... still single at 33, and not wanting to give up on dating and whatnot just yet so i have to stay in a metropolitan area. keeping my fingers crossed that my recovery will continue to go well, and maybe i can take a little trip to Central America this winter before i start working again.

my most recent critter encounter in the US was a rat that pooped and peed ALL over my kitchen... still found droppings in my stuff after i moved. blech. current apt is on the 5th floor - no critter problems there unless you get a bedbug infestation!!!

we got a taste of the ginormous number of pidgeons who hang out in Plaza Cataluna yesterday here in Barca... my god were they hilarious, and it was adorable watching the kids chase them! my friend, it turns out, is afraid of pidgeons. i think he overcame that at least a little bit! they do tend to zoom right over his head b/c he's 6'4"...

[Kimberly]

I live in the San Francisco Bay area and right near my house, the salmon are running. They return from the sea and move up toward the Sierra Nevadas to spawn in fresh water. On my daily walk I don't actually see any salmon but do see the TONS of seals and sea lions cruising around for an easy meal. They cruise, they loiter. They toss the salmon around to each other while the gulls swarm. They steal the fish off the fishermen's (fisher-people?.....angler's!) lines. If it's not too cold to leave windows open at night you can hear them barking in the dark. A very dangerous journey for the salmon to be sure, but fascinating to watch.

[Katie]

Kimberly, that brings back such a great memory. I used to live in British Columbia, and got to see the Adams River Salmon run one year. It is an amazing sight, with thousands of large bright red fish fighting their way up the shallow river bed. I guess once they got past your seals, they then had to survive the hundreds of bald eagles and bear who were trying to put on the fat for winter. Here is a link to a great website with lots of photos. Photos | Adams River Salmon Society, Shuswap, BC, Salmon Run, Salute to the Sockeye

I think most of my best memories involve finding amazing encounters with wildlife over the years.