Wildlife

We have had very cold mornings this week for our walk to school. 17 degrees was the coldest and the rest have been in the 20's. When the weather gets really cold the animals in the mountains start moving down into the valley. Yesterday morning we were walking down the stairs that lead into the field and when I reached the bottom, I looked up and was startled to see a deer about 20 feet away. It looked at me and then walked across the path. I said, "Anna, Anna, look." Then I saw to my left, there were three more deer. They walked across the path. And then more came wandering across. There were 7-8 and one had antlers. They just looked at us and watched us. After they were all across we continued on our way. We also saw a large bird (maybe an eagle or hawk or falcon) sitting in one of the trees.

Anna thought that was so cool. In the afternoon, I was coming down the stairs to go get Anna and once again looked up and was startled to see the same deer still there not 20 feet away (I thought they would have moved on by then even though it hadn't warmed up very much.) I stopped and they watched me, but didn't leave. Eventually, I slowly and quietly walked down the path and they didn't seem to mind.

So this morning I brought my camera, just in case. As we were walking down the stairs, Anna said, "Oh mom, we never see anything when you bring your camera. When you don't bring your camera, that's when we see things." I said, "Well, your dad says I don't have that much influence on the universe." (He said this not with any bad intention but in response to me thinking that whenever we are watching a football game and I come in the room, my team starts losing!)

Frank was proven right as we did actually see something. We saw a beautiful sunrise.


We did not see the deer, but instead, we saw three coyotes. We had seen one earlier in the week walking home from school. They were very hard to see because they blend in so well.



And this is one of the reasons why we try to walk to school whenever we can. I told Anna when we saw the deer that if we had driven to school, we never would have seen them.