Animal tales from the road

When you are cycling along rivers and through forests and meadows you see a lot of wildlife.  Unfortunately, it is hard to capture these moments, especially from a moving bike.  And capturing eagle flight or long distance sea lion antics would be hard no matter what.

The moment I will always remember was the surprised raccoon standing along the road in Washington. We heard rustling and turned to look. Usually the creature that rustled is long gone and you see nothing.  Standing and peeking our from the ferns and watching us ride by was a raccoon. So cute.  We failed to get the picture but it was a lot like this excellent photo by J Bespoy.

Keeping on Your Toes in the Woods by J Bespoy

Generally, we would see something interesting and stop to watch.  We saw osprey fledglings in the nest and bald eagles in flight and perched in snags. We routinely came upon deer in the road, and startled one doe crossing with her fawn who decided to turn back when she saw us coming round the bend. Usually there were no right of way issues but I did slow down and proceed with caution a couple of times.

Dagwood was riding ahead of me and I was diligently working my way up a hill, when I noticed a skunk ambling along.  When the skunk decided to move into the road I calculated my speed and  the skunk's path.  I was afraid we might run into one another which did not seem like the best idea.  I do not know how skunks startled by cyclists respond, nor do I need to know.  I will leave that experiment to someone else. I stopped and waited while the skunk slowly toddled across the road and disappeared into the tall grass. Then I finished the hill.

In northern California coming out of the redwoods  there are some meadows where elk like to hang out.  There are of signs every 10 feet alerting you to the presence of wild elk and strongly advising you to not mess with them.  We had gone past some of these meadows one  afternoon and seen no elk.  But the next morning we went past another elk friendly meadow and, as advertised, there was a large elk herd including calves.  There was an RV stopped across the road and I could see all the occupants peering out the front window looking at the elk.  I wanted to stop and look too. Did I mention, there is no fence between the meadow and the road? I felt very small on my bike between the people safely enclosed in their RV and the bull elk.  I decided to leave the elk in peace and pedalled on.