Our little farm is nestled in a pinyon juniper habitat that we share with lots of other creatures. Often enough, we encounter these animals close up. Sightings of foxes, coyotes, deer, elk and turkeys are so commonplace as to have become almost (but not quite) uninteresting.
Other creatures we see mostly by the signs they leave behind — paw prints, scat, feathers, fur, or partially eaten prey. Sometimes they invade our garden, compost pile or orchard. One year, a bear climbed up into a young Honeycrisp tree that was loaded with apples and nearly destroyed it while devouring all the fruit.
We have a game camera near the back of our property where we can observe creatures coming and going. It’s been a busy summer on the game cam.
Here’s our neighborhood bear.
A mountain lion has also been hanging around. We’ve been seeing him a lot on the game cam, though never face-to-face (and I’m ok with that).
Oh, and the tigers! Ok, tiger striped cats, but they think they’re tigers. Sometime this summer a mamma cat started hanging around our winery. They were hungry, so I gave in and began feeding her and her five kittens — two black, one gray and two tiger striped tabbies. We have managed to trap all but one of them (still working on it!) to vaccinate and spay or neuter, which I’ve learned is no easy task.
Omg the cats are beautiful!! Props to you for doing the right thing with TNR! It is quite hard