Prepping for winter. Be kind to the animals

I'm writing this and staring at a bag of birdseed, sitting at my feet. The feeders are empty and I feel a twinge of guilt. So, tomorrow, before I head off to PLU, the feeders will get filled.

Here is a great blog and a great post on how to be kind to the critters in our back yard during the winter, which here, seemed to start this weekend with blasting rainstorms that knocked all the leaves off the trees.

Wildlife in Iowa

Yeah, Iowa, were I was representing PLU at a conference of Lutheran Colleges. Actually, it's wasn't as dull as I expected. Lots of interesting and fun people back there who didn't take themselves too seriously.

In front of the student dorms, where we stayed, was this wonderful sawgrass prairie with wonderful wildflowers, all elbowing each other for the top part of their canopy. The sunflowers won out. But the wildlife was wonderful, if you just had patience. Deer, fox, pheasants, goldfinches (the state bird), cardinals (very shy), and rabbits.

And I decided to go on the canoe trip. Not much wildlife except for trout and turkey vultures, and lots of swallows, all in their mud hut condos that where stuck to the top of chimney-like slate formations that rose up from the river about 200 feet above our heads.

Coyote hunting season is about to begin

At least according to the U.S. Navy, which has its sights on a coyote that's been living in Discovery Park, according to this Seattle Times article.

Now, don't get me wrong, if the coyote had harmed a human, I would have acknowledged the necessity of this. But so far, it's just been seen, and I think chewed up a cat. I don't think that deserves a death sentence.

There have been coyote sightings all around Scenic Hill, in fact there was a flier that circulated this fall about a coyote and cat-small dogs going AWOL. And late one night, coming home, I saw what at first appeared to be a small dog jogging just at the edge of my headlights. But then the tail came into focus. Too bushy and too silver for a dog. It was a coyote on the hunt.

And I do know that there's a pack of coyotes near The Lakes, that set about to howling each evening, and more than a few cats have disappeared from that complex, I'm told by friends that live there.

No one, as far as I can see, is calling for a coyote hunt here.

Photo taken by the Seattle Times.

(As an update later in the day, the PI posted this story. Apparently the coyote has a reprieve.)

Love to watch 'em, tho from a distance

Just took the dog for a walk, and lo' as I rounded the corner for home on Hemlock Street, there was a skunk, rooting for bugs? earthworms? spiders? all of the above in a neighbor's yard.

I happen to like skunks alot, and I think I saw this one running across the same street last night, but it was too dark and too far away to tell for sure.

I quickly Googled and came up with this Web site that gave me a run down. They are nocturnal, gentle, will only spray if defending their young or threatened, and only as a last resort. This one ignored me until I stamped my feet, and off it went, under a rhodie bush.

I found out that they eat rats, and 70 percent of their diet consists of animals or bugs considered harmful to gardens or humans. So, there you go. This might be the culprit digging under my husband's greenhouse. So I suggested pepper or moth balls as a non-lethal way of telling this particular skunk to den elsewhere.