All Work and No Play...

Makes Cat bitter.

This week is the week from hell. I've had a month's worth of work dumped on me in the last two weeks. I have three days to get most of it done. And I have something (meetings, social events) every night of the week. I'm stressed and frazzled and have been working almost non-stop since 7 a.m. this morning. That was fourteen hours ago.

So I'm stepping back. Taking a moment to breathe. And growl into the blog. I don't mean to growl at you but somedays you just have to stand on the rooftops and curse. I hope you don't mind too much. I'll return to my regular insanity on the weekend.

Until then, here is a very young male deer that walked in front of our house last week at 3 o'clock in the afternoon along with his sister. It's rare to see them out during the day but even rarer to see them walk down the street like that. I found the encounter magical, although now I just hope that they found their way back to the woods okay.

Yet Another Rant

I'm up on my soapbox again. Just consider yourself warned.

I came home from work last night to find that all the beautiful old trees along my street have been ripped out. Huge, mature trees have been pulled up by their roots and scattered along the roadside waiting for the wood chipper. I am disgusted. And why did they do such a terrible thing? Simple, they need to widen the street. Apparently two lanes is not enough and well...as you know, progress must take precedence. I was awful to see all the dead trees and I was a bit angry. Then I saw the creek. They are also pulling out trees along the creek that don't even come near the road. And now I'm pissed.

We chose this house because of it's proximity to the creek and the wooded area that borders the townhouse compound. I love that I get deer in my yard some evenings, either foraging or simply laying down. I can sit out in my front yard and watch tons of birds and the occasional animal. To see them tear out some of these beautiful trees just makes me ill. Add this to the fact that I had to spend some time on the DNR's website yesterday and happened to find their wildlife report. I thought that would be interesting reading. I could read about the reintroduction of peregrine falcons or how we are starting to see more mountain lions returning to the region. But a good chunk of the document instead covered deer. More specifically how well the herd management program was going.

And that, combined with the trees, just made me furious. Why are we the only species that doesn't watch it's population size? Our population has almost tripled in the last sixty years. From 2.5 billion in 1950 to an expected 7 billion shortly after 2010. We plow and pave gigantic sections of the world making them only habitable for humans. We call rabbits and deer pests when they eat the flowers we plant or when they step in front of our cars. And we can't understand why they would do that. Perhaps those roads cut off access for them to food sources. Perhaps the flowers we plant are regular food staples for them. I'm scared to see how many deer will die on the newly expanded road in front of my house. And that will only bring more legislation on herd management. We won't seem to see our involvement. We drive out creatures who are only looking to survive so that we can expand.

I'm not having children for a number of reasons. Some are selfish, some are not. But one of the reasons is that I feel that we humans have grabbed a little two much of the planet for ourselves. We push animals into small stretches of land and then get angry when they step back into the ever larger chunks that we steal for ourselves. I see other creatures constantly forced to make do with our scraps while we build ever larger freeways and push our cities out into the farmland. I hear of nature preserves losing funding and that extra money going toward bringing in new construction to destroy even more land. And sadly it seems never ending. According to a forecast done by the US Census Bureau, the world population will reach 8.5 billion during my lifetime. And I wonder what will be left of the planet to support them. And with 8.5 billion, will there be enough room for the other species.

One of the comics I read daily is Non Sequitur. Wiley Miller does some incredibly funny stuff but he can also be incredible poignant. He did this comic almost a year ago and I had to save it. It fits so perfectly with some of my thoughts. (for a larger size go here, I know it is hard to read)

Some Natural Observations

I should have been a biologist. The stories of researchers spending months in the field watching animals day in and day out, seems to me like heaven. Even the tedious note taking and sketching doesn't seem like a job to me. I don't have the education for it but I do have the interest. And strangely the patience. I can spend hours watching animals, even for animals that aren't moving. This comes from years of going to zoos, leaning on the rail, watching the tigers sleep. It didn't matter that they didn't notice me (or even move) it only mattered that they were these magnificent living breathing creatures and that I could see them. 

So when I came home tonight from work and stopped the car, I was excited to see a herd of deer in the woods near our house. I swiveled in my seat to watch them scavenge for food in the snow-buried field. They watched me at first but as I sat in the car and didn't move they eventually forgot I was there. That was when I noticed a buck closer to the river than the others. He watched me carefully. And then cautiously he moved closer and closer. He stopped at my next-door neighbor's door to nibble at her bushes. He was not more than 20 feet from me and I was even able to grab my binoculars that I carry in my purse for a closer look. He was so close I could see the patterns of his fur. He would occasionally glance in my direction but seemed curious rather than scared. I just kept hoping he would come closer. 

My across the way neighbor decided that was the time to leave the house and he raced off into the woods with his white tail up. I sat in the car long after she had left with the hope that he would return. He didn't and I finally went in. Jeff had thought I was angry with him since I'd been sitting out in the car for so long. But I could have waited longer. I have unlimited patience when it comes to animals. What a great end to a busy day. 

Oh Deer

I'm in full ice cream mode. Every year, about this time, I go into what I call ice cream mode. It becomes an obsession for me. Every night I come home and think about going out for ice cream. So after an incredibly frustrating day yesterday and a somewhat healthy salad dinner, I asked Jeff if we could go to Dairy Queen. Having one within walking distance is dangerous and wonderful at the same time. 

Jeff agreed that we could go if we took the long way. He wanted a bit of a walk. So we hiked along the creek near my house until we ran into a road that we couldn't go under. We then followed a park until we hit an open field. I was starting to feel more relaxed. Work has been crazy. Then we saw the five deer in the field. Two adults and three babies. They were wary of us but didn't run. So we crept a little closer. I learned that if you drop down into a crouch or crawl on hands and knees they pay you no mind. It was true. The moment we stood up they were alert and wary. When we dropped down they instantly went back to eating as if we weren't there. 

We crept along the tree line until we were only about 20 feet from them. Then I sat down and watched them for a long time. The mosquitos were bad and we had to keep brushing them away but the views were spectacular. I was frustrated that I didn't bring a camera. We would have been able to get some great shots without the zoom. Finally ice cream cravings got the best of us and we moved on. But as we left I realized that all that stress I had been holding all day was gone.  I apparently left it out there in that field. The french silk pie blizzard was wonderful but it was the deer that had made my night. I need to spend more time hiking. It soothes the soul.