Animals We've Seen

It's been 5 years and I'm still holding out for my whale.  It can be any kind:  killer, blue, grey...green if that's what it takes.  I just want to see a whale.  I did see dolphins swimming alongside our boat off of Bali in December 2009, and that took off a bit of the edge, but I'm not giving in.  There's a whale out there somewhere and it wants ME to take it's photo.  In the meantime, I'm quite happy to report that on this trip, during and outside of our road trip to Alberta and the US, we've seen a multitude of animals in all shapes and sizes. We started writing what and how many in the back of our Sudoku book because we were losing count.  That's a good problem:)

the hind end of the black bear

Our tally is: a variety of large ground hogs, a mother duck and her 5 ducklings crossing the road, donkeys and mules (ok, farm animals, but they were unique to us), one black bear, 6 bighorn sheep, 2 elk, 3 moose and one calf (a mom and her baby only seen by our friend Sheldon and Matthew), harlequin wood ducks, chipmunks, 7 raccoons, squirrels, eagles, deer (sometimes over 25 in a day... and some of that's in town!), and a camel.

The camel was funny and timely, because earlier on the morning that we saw it, I had jokingly told the kids to look out for camels since we were entering historical gold mining territory.  I explained how over 150 years ago camels were brought in by miners in the hopes that the hardy desert creatures would do well as cargo carriers throughout the BC mountains.  Sadly, no camel is reported to have adapted in any way to being a pack animal in the British Columbia wilds.  According to the history I learned, camels were much too stubborn and ornery and in no way cooperative, and in the end miners and gold diggers released their camels into the wild.  Imagine never having seen a photo of nor heard of a camel, and then seeing one wandering through a BC forest!  I'm sure there were a few stories told around campfires about strange, evil creatures wandering as 4-legged ghosts around the area.  A few hours after I told them this tidbit of history, we saw a camel in the distance.  It was in a cage, however, and probably wasn't related in any way to the sad creatures that are a short part of BC history.

Thanks for reading.

Creatures

Last blog post I promised a few photos and stories of the creatures around our house. The ants are far too small, most of them at least, to take photos of, but we do have some good stories. One of them is from when Rebecca was here. She went into her room to change her t-shirt and begin itching within minutes. After thinking that she might be going a bit crazy, she decided to check it out. When she removed her shirt there were ants crawling all across her. Ew!!! Lets just say that I knew something was up from the sounds of disgust coming out of her room. In the months around her visit we've been driven crazy by the little ants, ones that are much smaller than Canada's sugar ants. I thought maybe it was something in our house, but as I visit other homes, no matter how classy the home, I can still see ants on the floor at least. We've resorted to spreading baby powder at the base of our beds, and this has seemed to keep them at bay. No longer do I get woken up abruptly from a nap by some sharp bite on my arm or leg. I still have to shake out my toothbrush before I use it, and that may never end.

Since I last wrote the post promising stories, I've seen numerous lizards in our yard. Last week I saw one on our front door screen and was able to get a photo, and even better, yesterday I was cooling down after a long walk and saw a chameleon climbing a bush in our backyard. The red-spotted one in the photo was also on our front porch, and it's called a Tokay. It actually makes a sound like that. It's a very interesting lizard, and it loves to eat the big, fat juicy ants and flying termites that hang around our yard. In the last 36 hours I've seen 4 lizards (3 outside of our yard) and that's amazing. Usually I see one every few months. It must be lizard season!

We've also had a weird stint of bats around our place. It was neat that Rebecca was here to witness them with me. One Saturday

night we had stayed home from church, and we had a swarm of what we call flying termites (not sure if that's correct) buzzing our front porch

light. All of a sudden there were what seemed like dozens of bats swooping at the bugs, and this lasted for at least 30 minutes. Rebecca took a video and I got some photos. See the cat

watching the bats? We have no idea where it came from but it was just as intrigued as us. For the record, we took the photos from inside the house...there was NO way you'd get us outside with those evil looking things flying around our heads.

The photo of the frog was taken by Rebecca, in the middle of the night in our home. She saw it moving in the dark and instead of turning on a light, she figured out what it was by taking a flash photo of it. Clever! Lately there have been hordes of frogs frollicking in our front yard. They're everywhere...not quite a plague but they do make themselves known. I was even transplanting an orchid and there was a frog in the pot, under the orchid roots. Do they hibernate near the equator???

Today when I was gardening I found a dead snake in our little nook at the side of our house. Really, there's no better snake than a dead snake, at least when it comes to me entering dark spaces!!!

Thanks for reading.