I live on the edge of a small town up in the Western Highlands of North Carolina now. I actually live on a road that was once called Marrying Road, because it was the road people took to find a preacher and get married, it changed to Newfound when the Newfound Gap opened up to make east west travel in this area easier. My house is on the top of Star Ridge, so we are an odd mix of houses, farms, and forest. Mostly pretty civilized, but with lots of room for animals.
Everything is in bloom, so between my huge purple and pink butterfly bushes, big orange trumpet flowers and fifteen foot Rose of Sharon bushes covered in big pink flowers, I have a plethora of birds and bees, butterflies and wasps everywhere. The hummingbirds just swooped in when the Rose of Sharon bloomed and they fight with bees covered in so much pollen they look like little fuzzy yellow teddy bears. Chickadees, tufted tit mice, finches, cardinals, doves and two kinds of woodpeckers, provide an ever changing show all day long.
The road is busy, so all the dogs are kept behind fences of some sort and the cat is the only domestic animal that runs loose. I was dog sitting this weekend and while upstairs putting them to bed for the night, I saw the chance to get some photos I wanted for the A-Z photo group I am part of. (My theme this time, is critters in my yard.) Grabbing my camera I was back up there snapping pictures of bugs at 3 AM when I smelled the worst sort of feral smell you can imagine. The dogs were all going nuts barking, but I thought they were just upset that I was leaving them in their house while taking pictures on the deck..
It was not skunk, or fox, or coon. I know those smells, but I didn’t give it too much thought until I left the upper deck and headed back down the hill to my yard. I turned in, crossed the rocky driveway and opened my gate. As I closed the gate I turned around and right there, not fifteen feet away, plodding down the middle of the road was a distinctly bear looking creature sort of lumbering on by. I was so scared, I didn’t even think to look twice. I slammed the gate behind me and dashed for the house where I peered quaking out the windows trying to see.
Of course I couldn’t see a thing past all the shrubbery in my yard and nothing could have made me go back out to the street, so I will never be completely certain, but I know if I ever smell that again, I will be a little more cautious about running around in the middle of the night taking pictures.
(Copy and paste the link below to see the A-Z Photo Pages I am talking about and click on page 4 at the top right to go to this session on Critters in my backyard.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=112224&id=590231787&l=b2c25866d7
If you click on a photo, it will enlarge it and give you any comments others have made. Feel free to look at any of the other pictures that strike your fancy!)
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