wiley wildlife

I just had a revelation today that put a curious picture in my head. A pack of coyotes under a pear tree trying to eat all the pears they can reach.

I kept seeing coyote scat on the power-line trail behind my house that looked more like bear scat because it was full of some sort of fruit pieces, skin and seeds. I knew it wasn't bear just by the number of piles (one bear once would maybe be possible but not 15) and I've heard coyotes right out side my house lately. I love that!

Also, recently one night, the coyotes were yelping on the hill just beyond the shop, like 200 ft away! I stepped outside to listen and Reena streaked past me and ran out to meet them. She didn't come back for like an hour! Bi-atch! Once she did, I again heard the coyotes in the same spot, .....so I am assuming she did meet them? Since then, Reena has been taking to streaking off every morning when I let them out to pee. She always runs over to the same hill side. She'll come back in five minutes after she checks out where they coyotes peed, etc. I hear them most nights too.

I walked over to the pear tree on the hillside with the dogs and Reena was checking everything out. I looked around and found a whole bunch of piles of coyote scat full of pears....that was the fruit they had been eating. Just seems kinda silly to picture a pack of coyotes hanging out under a pear tree trying to get the pears off. My neighbors must have an amazing view of it because the pear tree is only 50 feet from their big picture window.

Oh, and a guy who lives just a half mile south of the pear tree, called one of our biologist the other day and said he had what he thought were 5 wolves in his back yard right at that moment, 12:30 in the afternoon. However, if you didn't know, Gov. Otter has declared that the State of Idaho will no longer work with the Feds in dealing with wolf issues. So the biologist had to tell him we cannot help him in any way and he needs to call Wildlife Services. I am pretty sure they are the same coyotes that hang around my house and not wolves. Wolves and coyotes don't do well with sharing territory.

Mineral Ridge

Lookey here, I finally learned how split firewood! Took lots of practice, and the fact that the wood is actually dry this year. I tried splitting all this wood last fall when right after it was first cut down so it was really green then, ...and that's why I couldn't split it. Yes, uh huh. Ok, and I didn't actually split all that wood in the photo, my technician did most of it, but I did about half of it. That's better than 0. I was afraid I was going to hack my legs off too, everytime I would miss the log, it would swing directly towards one shin or another. Too scary.

Went on a hike this weekend with an online MeetIn hiking group in CDA. It's the first event with the group I've attended, and I dragged Kathy along with me. But it was a beautiful hike on Mineral Ridge trail, over looking Lake Coeur d'Alene. Gorgeous right.

And here's Kathy with her two crazy labs, Harley and Whitney. They are both huge dogs, like 80 and 90 lbs. And all lab.