Speaking of animal life, I spent the afternoon for myself yesterday-packed up a lunch, a trowel, some baggies and hiked in the woods for a couple of hours, collecting plants and seeds to plant in my yard.
Up at the top of the hill near the next road, in the forest at the bottom of a big rockfall, there were deer tracks, cougar tracks, signs of a hellacious struggle, and the marks of something being dragged into the deep woods. I’ve never seen anything quite like that before-it was all in fresh wet soil, too, because it had rained the night before-you could still smell the crushed vegetation, as well as see it.
After the hair stood up on my neck, I hiked in the opposite direction of the drag marks, walking backwards, waving my stick around and singing “Revolution” loudly-a mountain lion is bigger than me-I had pepper spray, but I’m not going to piss the thing off by staying in its dining room. It was an interesting find, though, and I did find some Germander to try to transplant, and some Vitex seeds from a little grove of them escaped from cultivation...
T 5 lives down in Wild Kingdom with euell gibbons!!
Yikes! We’ve had sightings in the county of a black panther, the 4-legged kind and the wildlife folks felt compelled to say someone must have brought it into the area and let it go. To which we responded no...um...kidding, Sherlock.