Thursday, July 7, 2005

Wildlife

One of the best things about living in the middle of nowhere is the abundance of wildlife around. Just over the weekend we had quite a treat.

We saw:
-Two snakes. There is one snake in our Portland garden that has spooked me twice, but even still, for some reason I love seeing snakes. There is just something fascinating about their slithery legless nature.
- A whole family of quails including too many babies to count (>10?). One night we saw them in the pasture, but they came to drink at the pond the next day.
-Lots of other birds. Swallows swooped to drink at the pond, turkey vultures hovered over the pasture, yellow goldfinches perched on the deck rail (i never saw these in Portland), a big owl took in an aerial view of our fireworks show, and Mac and Jeremy got excited about something else - a western tanager sighting, I think.
-A deer in our pasture Sunday night. The first of many to come, according to the neighbors, many of whom largely regard the deer as pests. But we are still excited by them and are looking forward to seeing lots of other animals as well.




4 comments:

  1. Rumor has it that a wild J.D. peed in your pasture yesterday while you were out. Can you believe it?!?

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  2. Like the elk, a wild J.D. has never before been seen in the neighborhood; however, there was a partially domesticated Macdaddy out there marking his territory a few days ago.

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  3. Joel must be sorry to be missing out.

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  4. The feral Joel has migrated to his indigenous South Dakota, where he's often observed providing essential nitrogen to the prairie grassland (especially now that we only have one indoor toilet).
    Adult potty humor - The essence of this conversation is exactly the same as when we were five, except that our vocab is decidedly improved, no?

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