Animals

One of our favorite things to do at Grandma and Grandpa's house is to sit out on the patio, especially in the morning or early evening, and watch the wildlife wander through the yard. Deer are regular visitors, as are chipmunks and squirrels. More rare treats are baby deer, foxes, wild cats of one kind or another, and once in a while, a bear will make an appearance.

One night Mom and I set the table and called the boys up for dinner. Nicco said, "It's such a beautiful evening, don't you think we should eat outside?" We quickly moved all the trappings of the meal to the patio table and not much later, three deer came wandering through. Two does and the first buck sighting of the visit.

They ate their dinner while we ate ours and suddenly, they pricked up their ears and stood at attention. I commented that they saw, smelled, or heard something that put them on alert. About ten seconds later, they turned and ran down the hill followed by little blackish bear. I had the camera outside and tried to snap a picture, but the bear was running too fast for me to capture him.

After dinner, we called Patrice. Nicco told him breathlessly, "I saw foxes, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, hummingbirds, and...A BEAR!" then told his daddy about The Incident.

The next day, we walked down where the bear passed through, looking for tracks. And this is what we found:



It is a bear track, trust me.

There are a couple herds of buffalo up near Evergreen and we stopped by to see them both.

When we had lunch at the hot dog, we saw a little chipmunk stuffing his face with kernels of corn.

The Farmers' Market was like dogs on parade, one of which was a great dane.

We saw a couple of cats wandering the streets of South Park.

One morning there was a pair of squirrels chasing each other up and down and around the trunk of a tree.

There were lots of horses and cows and hummingbirds, and ducks and geese on the lakes and ponds.

Nicco even saw a snake!

(wink)

We kept hearing rumors of fawns, but kept not seeing any. Then one evening when I was in the office on the computer and Mom and Dad were out for a walk, Nicco came running in to tell me he saw a dog and I had to come see it. When he pointed it out, I told him it was a spotted baby deer! He was double excited then. He told me he thought it was a dog because it was so small and because it was "going like this," demonstrating the bounding action with his hands.

Nicco kept track of all the animals we saw on our visit, including those we saw when we were out on adventures.

This is his list:
Deer
Foxes and baby foxes
Buffalo
Elk
Squirrels
Fat-Faced Chipmunk
Hummingbirds
Dogs
Black cat
Great Dane
Fawn
Duckies
Geese
Snake
Horses
Cows

After two weeks, this is the animal he really wanted to see:

He missed his Frankie-Foo.