WILD KINGDOM

Potter Valley Style

D.H. Eraldi

        Friday morning, John calls down the hall, “don't let the dog out.”
        Hmmm. "Why?"
        "There's a dead deer on the lawn, and a bunch of buzzards.”
        Of course I have to go look out the window, and sure enough. Dead deer. Buzzards. Less than ten feet outside the bedroom. When I go out to feed the horses, I discover the bottom fence of the pasture leaning over, flattened, it appears, by some kamikaze deer barreling down the hill. An ex-deer.
        I straighten the fence back up but find when I get down to the barn that the electric fence is shorted somewhere too. I hike up to the top fence line and it also is pushed and stretched. Hard to believe that one little deer could do so much damage, but then again, the deer is worse for the wear.
        A convention of turkey vultures is busily cleaning up the mess on the lawn. They are quite efficient, doing what vultures do, and making short work of the carcass. We decide to let them clean it up before we have to bury it. It's not going to take long. We laugh at the big birds trying to roost on the flimsy plant stakes in my garden, the wind holding them up on their outstretched wings.
        Later in the day, I'm sitting at my computer with the view out the window into the pasture. Along comes a little reddish-tinged coyote, cautiously following her nose around the corner of the house. She chases off the remaining buzzards and claims the deer carcass for herself, though she is nervous and keeps looking down at the street every time the noise of a car goes by. She doesn't seem to see or care about us watching and taking photos out the window. I get the best close-ups of a coyote I've ever taken.
        She doesn't stay long, spooking away when our neighbors down the street come out of their house. Enough Wild Kingdom for us, we go out and dig a hole with the backhoe, a double duty hole as we wanted to plant a tree anyway.

        Just one week before we had seen a black coyote hunting ground squirrels on the hillside above us. It was the first one we'd seen since last year when John startled three of them away by shooting over their heads. They definitely understand shooting – they left and didn't come back. But with the arrival of the ground squirrels this year, we figured other varmints would follow. Sure 'nuff.

        Life and wild life here on the homestead.

        D.



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