Attribution of pictures is below.

I’ve met a couple of new friends lately.

(Actually this post is a month out of date. It was originally scheduled for October 16, but was displaced by a tribute to Alexi Leonov.)

This has nothing to do with writing, just with the life of a writer up here in the foothills. Over the years I’ve had plenty of wild visitors. By visitors I don’t mean the nuthatches, jays, and woodpeckers who live here all the time; nor the northern flickers (we call them 747 birds because of their size) and rufous-sided towhees who winter over. I also don’t include the turkey vultures who are always overhead.

I do count the great blue heron who came walking by one day. There’s nothing like a six foot blue bird slurping down a gopher to get your attention.

We’ve had coyotes running through our property many times. On two occasions they crawled under bushes in the yard to die. One was a youngster, probably hit by a car. The other was a ragged oldster at the end of his days. Those are the events that bring a settling of dozens of the vultures.

I don’t blame the oldster for picking our place as his last rest. We don’t have dogs to harass, we have lots of shade, and we keep basins of water available through the yearly seven month drought. We can’t stand the thought of a thirsty animal.

We have raccoons, although we rarely see them. Some mornings one of the water basins will be solid mud, and we know they’ve been by to drink and wash their food. Three times we’ve been visited by the neighborhood bobcat, but our elevation is a bit low for mountain lions. I’m all right with that. Bobcats don’t eat people; mountain lions occasionally do.

We have ducks and geese flying by and small hawks and owls living in our trees. Big red-tailed hawks and an occasional bald eagle cruise overhead with the ubiquitous vultures. And of course, bats come out by night.

Deer come by from time to time and eat our tomato crop. We were even visited once by the Christmas Pig. That was a 300 pound escaped porker who passed by one December 25th.

We have a flock of turkeys who come by two or three times a week in winter. I haven’t seen them for months, but they are about due to return. (And here they are, a week after I wrote that.)

I’ve mentioned most of our normal visitors before. Recently we’ve had two new ones. The first announced his presence several nights a week for a month or so, sending us an odoriferous wake-up call through the open window. We knew we had him before we saw him. I was walking back to the house at dusk one evening when I almost stepped on him. He looked up quizzically and I retreated.

Then for a few weeks, he showed up in the daytime. Who knew that a skunk is one of nature’s most beautiful creatures? I haven’t seen him for a while now and I miss him, odor notwithstanding.

Then, on the last day of September, Stinky Boy’s cousin showed up.

Now I know a badger is not a biological cousin of a skunk, but they share a striped face and that’s close enough for me.

In the interest of full disclosure, my wife saw him for full-faced positive identification. By the time I got there, all I saw was wide brown, furry butt disappearing at high speed into the distance.

So close, and yet so far.

The skunk photo is in public domain, the badger photo is via GNU. Both critters avoided my camera when they came to visit. Actually the skunk was in plain sight, but I didn’t dare get close enough for a good shot. You know, friendly fire.