Wildlife

So, when we were first scouting this site to build our house, A's dad mentioned in passing that he'd seen a moose about 2 miles down the road, near some trees and a permanent pond. 'Sure you did', I thought sagely to myself. Moose, while certainly present in the Palouse, are not so common that you just see them wandering around* -- and A's dad, while a fantastic person, is sometimes more of a storyteller than a scientist.

So, we're sitting on our deck enjoying the evening sun for the first time since we moved in, when who should come sauntering around the corner of our house?


Pictured: A nice lady moose. Like all wildlife photos, she was much closer before I ran to get the camera.

So, egg on my face, huh?

Wildlife has pretty sorely been lacking this winter, or at least right around our house. We've had mice in the woodpile (and -- sigh -- the garage), some Canada geese, some sparrows [? I'm terrible at identifying birds] that were building a nest in our gutter (I don't think it worked out), and various raptors including a bald eagle and some kind of giant hawk that was sitting in a tree not 5 feet from my car when I was driving to work one day. We saw deer almost every day when we were first building the house, but none for a while.

But the variety has really increased in the last couple weeks as the weather has gotten warmer. I hear tons of different bird songs (of course, I can barely tell a duck from a dodo, so I have to work on this). We've heard although not seen coyotes and owls, got a bit of an air show from some bats last night after the moose left, and some swallows [?] seem to be building a nest under our deck. I saw a wild turkey tom about half a mile from here earlier this week -- man, those things are HUGE!

Less delightfully, at least a dozen paper wasps were hanging out in the chicken coop last night, and we found an enormous blister beetle in the yard the other day -- seriously, it was at least an inch and a half long and when I smashed it (I'm generally live and let live with bugs but the internet says that they exude an oil that can cause blisters [hence the name] and their larvae are parasitic on bees) all this glistening orange goo came out... supergross.

Of course, all of these animals are delightful to see -- but every last one of them is potentially an enemy of the farm, out to eat our plants and kill our chickens. Well, maybe not the bats. Being citified, we're hoping that fence and various old-wifey controls will keep them enough at bay, but that isn't always how it works out.

Still, I don't think we'll shoot the moose.



*Actually, this is totally untrue -- they had to lock down the junior high in Moscow a few years ago because a moose was on the property.