Bobcats and snakes and foxes! Oh my!

"Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well." Theodore Roosevelt

Happy Spring! 💙💦🌱 Finally we made it in to camp for the first time this year. We made it in last year around the same time (end of April). There was still a little snow on the ground in the shade; six inches here or there. The mud was abundant, though. If it were not for our lifted truck with 35" tires, we would not have made it past the first half mile of trail. A normal car or truck would be sucked up into the depths of muddy mess. There was a station wagon and a truck parked on the side of the trail at the beginning because they could not go any further without the risk of getting stuck. There were a few surprising times where our truck was sucked into some mud and after we scrambled out, R and I momentarily locked wide-eyes in surprise with excited grins.

Thankfully everything was as we had left it December 2. We were even surprised because we forgot we had gathered a night's worth of firewood in the cabin before we left last time. However, that pleasant surprise was short lived when we opened the stove and part of the rope caulking came off the wood stove door. R started a fire to see if we could make it work, but soon the smoke billowed out of that unsealed portion of the wood stove door and quickly filled the cabin. We had to rush Tyson and Willow out to the truck for fresh air before we extinguished the flames in the stove so we could start to air the place out... Que sera sera. R checked the weather before we left and the low was expected to be 29℉. We had plenty of blankets, so we weren't too worried.

We left at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday and arrived at camp around 8:30 a.m. It rained all day. Willow didn't care though. Willow loves the rain. She even blessed me with a cute little "purrrRR" in the video.

She also let me know that I need to work on expanding her Maine catio during the next visit or two. This one is too small, she says. She's comfortable enough now to have a Big Girl Catio. Ok, Willow, I'll get on it.

While Willow was taking her afternoon cat nap, Tyson, R, and I went on a hike through our woods to see if we could locate the western property line. Tyson enjoys bounding through the woods all willy-nilly, but we kept him close because in his old age (he'll be 8 in July) he's lost some of his vision and we don't want him to get lost in the woods. We've learned the hard way that calling him from afar can sometimes backfire because the echo of our voices throws him off. Plus, our walk was headed towards the area that we last year the coyotes, and we certainly don't want Tyson to be lured off to his impending doom.

Lets see if you can spot Tyson in the next couple of photos. The first couple are easy.

Tyson, in his spiffy bright orange jacket, so we can see him in the woods.

This picture shows about how much snow was left in the shady areas.

What a happy puppy.  Tyson is wondering why we aren't keeping up with his pace.

Ok - here's a good one.  Where's Tyson? 😁  His dang pink tongue is always out.

We were unsuccessful in finding any boundary, but we did find some other interesting things. We noticed there were a good few large'ish trees that had fallen, and we wondered why. Then we saw inside the snapped trunk and became even more curious.

I received the opinion of a few people on what might have caused this damage. Opinions ranged from straight-line winds and carpenter ants, to something called Heart Rot. Heart Rot is a slow-growing fungus that rots out the center of the tree while the young'ish tree continues to grows around it, fungus unseen. Heart Rot weakens trees, obviously, and can cause them to break and fall more easily. The former owner felled a few trees and we noticed what we thought to be a mysterious hole in the center of the trees, with solid outer rings. Unfortunately, I think Heart Rot might be a good guess, especially with all of the fungus we see growing throughout our young forest. Once the nicer weather gets here, we're going to contact our Forester and a regional biologist for their opinion.

More interesting finds - scat! We've read that you should pick through the excrement with a stick to see what it contains because that will give you an idea of what animal dropped a deuce. R did the picking...

Viewer discretion is advised. Please avert your eyes from the next picture if you are susceptible to a queasy stomach.

I know for sure the small pebble-like droppings are deer. I'm thinking the top right and bottom right may be bear, though we haven't seen any bear on our trail cameras. I'm not sure what the left two are. The bottom left looks like it could be bobcat? 🤷

While we had our eyes open for additional piles of scat, we saw Tyson just off the trail in the woods and he scratched at something. We hollered his name and he stopped to look at us (good boi). Hurrying over to his location, I looked down and gasped aloud. (Viewer Discretion is Advised).

Take a minute to look at this picture. Zoom in a bit, if you will.

WHAT. THE. HELL.

I have a....an issue with snakes. I don't care for them, as much as I value their place in the ecosystem. As I was crouching down for this picture, I was tensed, expecting them to leap up at me out of their dead state. I had to keep reminding myself that they were dead as a door nail, and I was not going to be harmed. 😅 A close friend pointed out that the top, knotted snake's exposed muscle from the beheading is still pink. This means it must have been a fairly fresh kill. Whatever it was, it's lunch may have been disturbed by the three of us traipsing through the woods! WHAAAAT. We leave it be and head back to the cabin.

On our way back to the cabin, we walked down the main trail that bisects our land. There are ditches alongside the trails to divert water from the thaw. The trickling water is such a pretty sound.. (wait for it...)

Oh! We finally were able to check our trail camera. We hadn't checked it since December 2, 2018. Much to my chagrin, I forgot to delete some files off of the SD card, and so the camera was only functioning until mid-February. Bummer. But we did capture a few woodland creatures on video!

The first is a grouse, which is a bird that looks like a basketball with a head. Willow and I have seen these in the woods.

Next comes the first sighting of a fox.

Lastly is another video of a bobcat. I'm wondering if we have two bobcats, because they look different sizes. I've read that male bobcats often have one or two females within their territory.