Tag: mule deer

Bear sign

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
A witty response to an unnecessary shooting.

Here on this mountain top, oh-oh-oh
I got some wild, wild life — “Wild Wild Life,” Talking Heads

“Wild wild life.” You ain’t alone, David old scout.

Herself recently took off for a few days of thrifting with a gal pal, leaving me and Miss Mia Sopaipilla to hold down the fort.

She didn’t get back in time to see the bear in our back yard.

Miss Mia and I were sound asleep when the bear dropped by to see if we had anything to eat. Which, of course, we did — two bird feeders and three hummingbird feeders.

The racket at the buffet woke me — but not Miss Mia, who’s as deaf as a stump — and as I tumbled out of bed I figured we were dealing with a raccoon, maybe a skunk.

Nope. Bear. Small to medium, and in the early stages of deciding that getting any breakfast out of those polycarbonate tubes would burn more calories than s/he could hope to consume.

“Did you get any pictures?” Herself asked when I texted her the news. Yeah, right, I’m stumbling outside at oh-dark-thirty to snap a selfie with a famished bear. I’ve seen how fast they can run, and how fast I can run. No, thank you, please.

Anyway, social media is full of snaps of hungry, thirsty bears staggering down from the Sandias to plop into water features, snack on unsecured garbage, and in at least one incident, get shot by a knucklehead. The bear survived, though one of her two cubs did not, and the shootist seems short of friends (see a neighbor’s protest sign up top).

Our little bear problem was on me. I’d seen bear scat on a section of trail we run once or twice a week, and we’ve been avoiding that stretch because, hey, that scat doesn’t get there without the bear, amirite?

But I didn’t think to start bringing the feeders in at night. Now I am.

Didn’t keep the skunk out, though.

I heard something cough at stupid-thirty yesterday morning. Wasn’t me. Wasn’t Herself. Miss Mia was sacked out in the half-bath sink on the other side of the house, and she wouldn’t have heard a cough if it was her doing the coughing.

So up I get, grab a light, and crack the vertical blinds. Holy hell. Big ol’ skunk, butt aimed at our bedroom window.

Nope, sorry, not going out for a pic of that, either.

“Bear? Where?” asks our furry little pig in a blanket.

Snakes abound. Definitely a snake year. A dog walker recently told us she’d seen three buzzworms just that morning. One of them was in her yard.

The deer are back too, rolling up and down the arroyos like streetcars working the hills in San Francisco. Bucks with harems, does with speckled fawns.

Quail. Herself and I quit counting after seeing 50 on one recent ride.

And the hummingbirds? Off the charts. It looks like the Battle of Britain out there. We’re burning through sugar faster than three kindergartens and a Dunkin’ next to a cop shop.

Hey … it just occurred to me. Do you think they’re visiting us the way we visit zoos?

“Just look at the poor hairless apes, kids. Nearly extinct. I’d like to say we’ll miss them when they’re gone, but I’d be lying. They’ve certainly had a wild, wild life.”

Socialism in the desert

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Fried maple leaves, coming right up.

Hot times in the old town, as the fella says. Yesterday’s high of 100° set a record for June 7. Normal is 89°.

But what’s normal these days?

The mule deer are slow-walking their rounds from rose bush to birdbath, lingering at feeders provided by some well-intentioned animal lovers up the road a ways. Wandering from this handout to that, the deer startle motorists in blind corners and make high-speed descents on the old two-wheeler a little more thrilling.

Seven of them were working our cul-de-sac last night, no doubt with designs on the neighbors’ new peach tree, which is enclosed in the sort of stout wire cage that should be restricting the movements of Alex Jones and Rudy the Mook, preferably in some public place so passersby can poke them with sharp sticks. Jones and the Mook, not the peach tree or deer.

Over at Desert Oracle Radio Ken Layne has his own musings on heat and wildlife as he settles in for another sweaty shift dishing up his Joshua Tree jive.

The days are long and hot and hazy. Another summer to endure. … It just eats at your nerves, this kind of weather, and what’s worse is you know that the hot weather is another month or two away. What’s bearable when you’re alone under a cottonwood in the breeze is absolute torment when you’re trying to get yourself from point A to point B and see ugliness all around. Dead eyes behind the cracked windshields of erratically piloted vehicles; the never-ending trash piles; empty strip malls of crumbling stucco and blank plastic signs. Long stretches of highway with nothing but human-built desolation. The ragweed’s coming up too. Best to stay on the property in the company of the creatures who survive this aesthetic apocalypse.

Layne provides a bit of heat relief for his neighbors. Young rock squirrels have taken to hanging around the water bowl he leaves out for the birds, one of them trying and failing to surf the ice cubes he includes from time to time. A cottontail dozes on the doormat. The bobcat, coyotes, and mountain lions he leaves to fend for themselves.

He has mule deer, too, hugging whatever shade they can find, under a willow or juniper. Doesn’t mention any peach trees or rose bushes.

Should we be feeding and watering these critters? Well … what we call “our” property was theirs first, after all. Is it unreasonable to ask that we contribute a little something to the common good?

This seems to be Layne’s thinking. And ours, too. We maintain two bird feeders and three hummingbird feeders, and don’t holler copper on the deer ambling through the yard. Noblesse oblige? Share and share alike? From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs? Here’s the Desert Oracle again:

Now these rock squirrels are desert squirrels, squirrels of the Southwest. They don’t even need water, beyond what they get from the various seeds, grasses, fruits and bugs that they eat. But these young squirrels, they are fools for cold water. They just hang around that bowl for half the day. And now I cannot replace that bowl with a proper birdbath even if I wanted to, because what will the squirrels and the bunnies do?

Spring training

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

I haven’t ridden this one yet.

It was a good week on the bike.

Actually, make that “bikes.”

The red Steelman Eurocross, Jones, and Sam Hillborne all enjoyed some quality springtime during the week, and the New Albion Privateer got the nod on Sunday.

Nothing outlandish, mind you. I’m not training for anything; just trying to avoid collapsing into a smelly heap of bone splinters and bad ideas. We’re talking 90 minutes per outing, or thereabouts, with a thousand or so feet of vertical gain, and an average speed that wouldn’t impress anyone, especially me.

I’ve never been what you would call fast, but I’ve been faster.

“Listen up, you kids, don’t make me stop this tree and come back there.”

Still, who cares? The idea is to be above ground and moving around, amirite? You know what my dad was doing when he was my age? Nothing! Because he had been dead for seven years.

So when Herself and I rolled out for our Sunday ride we were focused not on heart rate, average speed, or mileage, but on how many Gambel’s quail we might see (that would be a half-dozen, plus a couple deer).

Back at the ranch we have hummingbirds re-enacting the Battle of Midway around our three feeders, finches of various types bellied up to two tubes of birdseed while the doves prowl the ground for dropped morsels, and a northern flicker feeding babies bunkered up in a dead limb on our backyard maple.

And our young Chinese pistache tree is coming along, too.

It’s starting to get warm, so I expect we’ll start seeing buzzworms soon. But it’s OK. Every garden has its snake. Just steer clear of the fruit stand.

1:09

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Good thing I stopped to snap this pic of the Cateye showing 69 minutes (1:09). I’da kept on keepin’ on, I’da run headlong into a herd of deer.

Huzzah!  Our long national nightmare is over.

Lousy shot, but I didn’t want to startle the deer. A couple good bounds and they’re in auto traffic on Camino de la Sierra, which is much more dangerous than a trail with one 69-year-old dude on a bicycle.

I finally managed to squeeze in that birthday ride.

You will be astounded to learn that I managed my age in … minutes.

In keeping with the house motto, “Picturae vel id numquam evenit” (“Pix or It Never Happened”), I took a snap of the Cateye for documentation.

Now, as Feats of Strength go, this is … well, a tad feeble.

In my defense, however, I will note that I was riding a rigid steel drop-bar 29er on spiky desert singletrack — didn’t even bother to check the tire pressure before heading out! — and at one point nearly shot into a couple dozen deer browsing lazily along a narrow singletrack descent bordered with sharp rocks and cacti.

And still! 69, amirite? Winning!

Ruminating

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

“We’d like some port and cigars, if you don’t mind.”

We have visitors again. At least I don’t have to cook for this lot. Our back yard is their commissary. Also, their latrine.

They finally got on the neighbors’ last nerve the other day, waltzing in through an open gate and noshing on some choice bits of this and that, so we’re beefing up perimeter security here in the cul-de-sac.

This will require blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Also, probably, money. A mule deer can sail over an 8-foot barrier if there’s something to eat on the other side. We don’t have any 9-foot barriers handy, so in hopes of avoiding a pricey trip to Lowe’s we’re trying to dazzle ’em with bullshit. What the hell, it works on people.

Meanwhile, the deer had a high old time, strolling around the neighbors’ terraced gardens, leaping back and forth across our shared wall, and chasing each other around and about like very large hooved puppies. We should’ve shot some video — video cameras we got in spades — but we were having too much fun watching.