The last two weeks have provided some interesting moments in terms of wildlife encounters. The Sunday before last, for fun and exercise, I hauled myself up to the top of a pretty good hill, and as I'm resting, catching my breath and starting to get out my water jug, I heard loud rustling in the underbrush about 75 feet in front of me. Cool, I think, deer, maybe I'll see them as they bound away. No bounding, more and louder rustling, from at least two places. Oh, it's cows. See a glimpse of medium-sized (not large cow-sized) critter, darkish. Starting to question why I'm there now, and then hear the grunting and squealing. "Oh goodness gracious, my heavens", I think, "wild pigs!" (Sure, believe that language.) Fear winning out, I slowly and deliberately started walking right on back down that hill, keeping an ear out and glancing behind me to make sure they weren't deciding that I was getting on their nerves.
Saturday last, I got to feeling antsy and took off on a walk. I headed back up the same hill where I saw the wild pigs last week, thinking surely they would have moved on. They weren't at the top of that hill, and since I was a little bored with my route, instead of going straight back down the hill, I thought I could do a little cross country to the next hill over and walk up that one. Meanwhile, I knew of a good spring on the way where I might see some good birds so I headed for that. As I made my approach, and got up to about 50 feet away from the spring, I'll be darned if I didn't hear that same scary squealing that I did the week before. This time I saw the pig plain as day - it didn't like me much and took off downhill through the creek bed. I waited for my heart to stop pounding and caught my breath and pondered whether I wanted to continue with my plan or again make a retreat. I have to say that I had a feeling that there wasn't just the solitary pig, but I wasn't hearing or seeing any more. So I called out, "Hey is it safe to go down there? Are there any more pigs?" Instant boilup of pigs - maybe 8 or 9, all coming up out of the spring area. One of them started running in the wrong direction, i.e. toward me, so I waved it off - shoo shoo pig! What else could I do? Anyway, that tactic worked and they all went one way and I went the other.
I always thought that wild pigs were wily and wary and it was hard to get close to them. It isn't as if my approach is subtle - I just tromp along in my boots, rustling dry leaves and snapping branches, surely you would think they could hear me. I'm sure if I had had ill intent, they would be a million miles away. And yeeps, two weeks in a row!
I did continue my walk which only had one more eventful moment when I woke up a snoozy bobcat who had been taking a siesta under an oak tree.
When I got back from that excitement I had my lunch and watched several minutes of hijinks a la acorn woodpecker on the bird bath. There were three or four of them tussling and I grabbed the camera and got this shot.
More wildlife doings: some weeks ago, the Dinosaur found an empty Western Pond Turtle shell and brought it back to the house as a point of interest. Evidently, he put some saddle soap on it in the hopes of preserving the turtle leather. Lo and behold, waiting for us this weekend: evidence of coyote tampering. Guess they don't like soap.
The second-to-last time I discovered problems with the SMUFs (small mammals underfoot), I replaced my new soaker hose with fresh hose. That was so exhausting it wasn't until the following week that with the weather's help (two drops hit me) I was able to use the tractor to deposit dirt to bury said drip hose away from SMUFs. When I returned from a week's effort of making money from the Rechtel partnership where I'm employed, that is ripping off the tax payers, I found a dead plant, and many holes in the buried tubing. For the non-technical readers, one week is 7 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds equals 604,800 seconds. I only observed 580,028 bites in the tubing, so either the SMUFs weren't fully engaged in their task, or maybe a Red-Tail or bobcat made an appearance.The next obvious step is to connect a PLC to an IR sensor and then to some miniature Claymores. That can't happen until I get the water tanks in operation to limit the damage from the ensuing conflagration.
