Pinecrest Summer life has begun in earnest here, and the predominant sense is of being surrounded by life. One afternoon two turkeys, leading nearly twenty chicks, drifted past my cabin, swarming around obstacles like the shed or the woodpiles like ants, the whole time clucking and cooing in the strangest of ways. Yesterday as I tended a stumpburn on my front lawn, I ducked into the woods for more wood only to startle a young fawn, who was only three feet away from me when he decided to buck in terror and scamper into the woods. This is a curious behavior of deer, but obviously effective enough: fawns who are too small and weak to elude predators by their speed simply curl up in the woods and remain motionless, despite the presence of large animals around them. I know of one who literally remained in place for an entire cocktail party, just a few feet from the deck where the partygoers gathered. The behavior is generally effective: I spent several hours in the fawn’s company, only about twenty feet away, but had no idea it was there. Its leaping out nearly from under my feet quite startled me.
Later that afternoon I heard some giant crashing sounds in the woods behind the cabin, and ran to the back door with my binoculars. Sure enough, a medium-sized black bear was making its way through the woods, walking at an even pace like it knew where it was going. Curiously, however, it was not making the crashing noises. Something else, which it did not pay any attention to, about a hundred feet behind it, was causing the mayhem in the forest. I presume it was a second bear, though I did not get any closer, for obvious reasons. This morning I scrutinized the path of the bear, and found reasonable evidence – a beaten trail, rocks and logs turned over, and bear scat of various ages, including some from yesterday – that a bear path exists right across the property. I’ve certainly seen them often enough, in the same area, to confirm that independently.
And last night the coyotes howled all night, including the high-pitched group whelps which I’m told indicate a kill.
Did I mention the barred owls, who have been hooting so much over the last two nights it’s not that easy to sleep? Their calls boom across the field all night. Or the giant hornet that set up a nest in my shed? Don’t leave the door open for two days, I think is the lesson here. And speaking of which, both mice and chipmunks have gotten into the walls of the house, causing all kinds of scratching and racket. I’ll deal with that eventually. I did deal with the hornets already today.
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