I’m sure that I have mentioned that I live in a Seattle suburb. It is raining today in a desultory fashion, I live on the side of a hill, looking to the East. There is a golf course in the valley below, but I can’t see it. When I got up this morning the opposite hill was all misty from the rain. If you are thinking of moving to the Seattle area, you should be aware that it rains a lot here. A couple of days ago, I awoke very early, and the sky to the East was a brilliant coral, quite spectacular. Never saw that before. But that may say more about my early-rising habits than anything else.
Today, as I said, it was raining. And we were visited by a large flock of crows, noisy as could be. Crows officially come not in “flocks” but one speaks of a “murder of crows”. Well, nobody actually speaks that way, but that’s the official designation. I have no idea where that came from or why. I have pictures of a pair of bald eagles sitting in a tree on the uphill side of my lot, and a picture of several deer in the street out in front, never repeated, but nice.
This is all ordinary suburbia, but the mountains are not far away. We hear coyotes fairly often, they roam the golf course at night, looking for rabbits, and there are patches of woods around. At home in Idaho, there was lots of wildlife. I’ve heard a cougar scream, and a lynx killed my kittens. The dogs, of course, had their troubles with porcupines. Wildlife is not as far away as many assume, at least here in the west.
Environmentalists have pushed hard to restore wolves to the mountains of the West. I haven’t seen much written about it, but I know in some areas it is not going well. We never had wolves in my day. I’m rather inclined to be suspicious of those who claim to be “environmentalists” I always assume they are city apartment-dwellers who experience nature on their vacations, fall in love, but don’t really know much about it.
We had a year, long ago, when the snow came unexpectedly early. The deer, who usually moved down to the slopes of the Snake River where they could count on grazing through the winter, were stuck in the high country. The ranchers were also caught short, for they had not planned on having to provide hay for such a long period to feed their cattle. You could not buy hay on the market at all. We tried. The deer eventually starved and the coyotes feasted on the remains. That’s nature at work. Not always nice.
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American Elephants 