Okay, so the man got bit on the calf by a 'playful' cougar while throwing a stick for his dog in Leavenworth WA today.... Note to self: "Don't throw sticks for the dogs anywhere near the woods!" Cats will be cats, won't they?
I love your elk photo Msantique. There used to be a few acres adjacent to the foothills and Hwy 18 passing well east of the Seattle suburbs from south I 5. We would often see a small herd of elk bedding down for the night at dusk or grazing there if passing by in the early a.m. hours. Now it is sculpted into an exit/entrance cloverleaf off that hwy with drainage ponds etc. Asphalt reigns and the elk are long gone. That's the way it goes, I guess; but I miss the elk.
We have coyotes routinely, hear them, see them occasionally.
One night they were obnoxiously yipping about 50 feet out our bedroom window at 4 a.m. right along the goat pasture fenceline. I got up and opened the window to yell "Shut Up!" ( which is really rude and unlike me, but I had to get up in a couple hours for work and wanted to sleep LOL,) and I add that the coyotes didn't listen to me at all. Little scruffy monsters! Goats all okay, barking dogs gave the coyotes second thoughts, apparently.
Had an unfortunate episode with a drowned opossum in a former house with a swimming pool. The poor thing had apparaently fallen in overnight and couldn't get out again. It was floating under the bubble cover one uses to keep heat in. All I could see was that naked tail and as I rolled up the pool cover, steeled my nerves and told myself "This is going to be gross...." and it was. He was buried in a box and had his own little opossum funeral service, brief and to the point: " Happy Hereafter."
I asked someone once, if it was at all possible that baby opossums were cute and they practically screamed at me-- "NO!" We don't seem to have them here on this side of the mountain. No dead ones on road, none in yard. I still think they are a harmless, worthwhile scavenger, even if not too cute.
