Catch and Release Mousing

The trouble with cats is that no matter how tame they may appear, there is still quite a bit of wild animal in them.  Everyone knows that a cat is liable to turn on you if you don't pet it the way it likes, or if you taunt it by wiggling your fingers under a blanket, or if you don't share your tuna sandwich.  They can switch from purring softness into biting, clawing, blood-letters in the blink of an eye.  Does this sound familiar, or is it just my cats?

 A big yawn reveals that cats are not just purring and cuddles...they still have bite!

This wildness about cats is not my favorite part, though I admire it in them.  I will gladly take an aloof cat over a needy dog any day!  My dear departed mutt, Samson, is the exception of course.  This love of cats has led our family to adopt three little lions who permit us to share the same space and serve their needs.  During the long winter in Alaska they go into a sort of "couch hibernation" in which they mostly sleep and occasionally eat.  With the recent return of Spring, their hunting instincts have awakened and they have become restless.  Generally limp and listless, they are now sharpening their claws on our furniture, staring longingly out the windows, and making short excursions into the brisk outdoors to acclimate themselves to the new season.

As Spring creatures emerge, so do the cats' curiosity.

On a recent outing, our Siamese named Nina (short for "nincompoop") demonstrated that despite her age she still has the hunting skills of a lioness.  And the fickle mercy of a well-fed hunter playing with its food.  Rest assured, no animals were harmed in the making of this blog post.  In fact, Nina has an unusual, and strangely endearing, habit of bringing live animals to the house and releasing them after we've acknowledged her triumph.  I have personally watched her trot up the driveway, mewing a muffled call around some furry creature dangling helplessly in her jaws.  It goes something like this:

"Nina, what do you have?" we ask.
"meuwf," she answers.
"Awww.  Is it a little mouse?  Poor thing," we lament.
"mm-mreowf."

When she has sufficiently elicited our attention, she places the creature on the ground and sits down contentedly next to it.  As if afraid to temp fate, the creature twitches just slightly.  Nina glances calmly down at the shivering animal and then shifts her gaze off into the distance at an imaginary distraction.

"Mreow?"

And then the lucky little rodent makes a run for it.  It dashes off the edge of the driveway and into the grassy undergrowth.  Nina doesn't even acknowledge its departure, as if she's saying, "Scamper away little one.  We will meet again.  I know where you live."  At this point she saunters off in the opposite direction from us, tail swinging side-to-side like the king of the African plains.

This is a true story.

My little wildlife biologist.

A similar event took place last week involving a tiny Red-backed Vole that Nina brought to the window where I was standing.  After bringing Nina indoors, the short-tailed rodent slowly gained its faculties and crawled under the leaves of a freshly sprouted weed in my patio garden bed.  There it rested in the sunshine, curled up and dreaming furtively, until my son came home from school.  I love to give my boy every opportunity to interact with nature up close, and with three cats the opportunities are fairly frequent (though not all of them have such happy endings).  But this day, my boy gently captured the vole in a kitchen container and we walked it to a safe place to release it.

The furry tidbit seemed pretty comfortable in it's plastic container and needed prompting to escape.

Once it was out in the dried grass it became instantly invisible due to its perfect camouflage.

It soon got its wits about it and scurried back into the wilds where, hopefully, it learned its lesson about playing with miniature domesticated lions.

Every huntress needs her beauty sleep.

Show me the moose.

I have heard this question a lot this summer:

"Where can I see a moose?"

As a Naturalist at the Wynn Nature Center in Homer, Alaska, many visitors come with checklists of wildlife they want to see in Alaska.  Moose are almost always near the top of their lists.  Thankfully, many visitors have their wish fulfilled by walking on the Wynn's five miles of wooded trails and serendipitously sighting that largest member of the deer family.  But they are the lucky ones.  Many leave disappointed that all they saw were plants and some moose tracks.  I try to console by reminding them how much wild space there is for moose to hide in, that they really don't like to be seen by people, and that therefore seeing a moose is a matter of pure chance.

Moose usually see you long before you see them.

This young bull moose decided not to pose for my picture.

As for me, with as much time as I spend outdoors, my chances of seeing a moose are much higher.  Which is why I am fortunate enough to have these great photos to share with you of our local Wynn Nature Center icon.  Hope you enjoy them.  And remember, the more time you spend in nature, the more nature will reveal itself to you.

A mother moose and her calves in my backyard.

A  tender reminder that moose are amazing creatures.

Watcher in the Woods

I recently invested in a new tool:  a motion-sensor wildlife camera.

It seemed like a frivolous thing to spend a hundred dollars on, but boy has it been worth it!  In the past four weeks I have amassed a collection of over 200 photos of local wildlife.  I have decent-quality images of moose, magpies, foxes, and even a snowshoe hare.  By far, the real treasures are the images of two foxes that frequent our woods.  I feel incredibly lucky each time I catch a glimpse of a fox with my own eyes, but it is often months between sightings.  With my wildlife camera, I have documented the elusive creature's visits to an old den almost every day since I strapped the camera to a nearby tree.  It turns out that more than one sneaky fox has been checking on the unused den in my backyard without my ever noticing!  In fact, the coy carnivores wore themselves a nice little brown smudge in the snow where they perched at the edge of the field to observe the goings-on around our house.  I got several photos of them doing just that on the very first night I put out the camera.

Red fox perched on top of an old den watching the watcher!

This red fox has has a silvery color-morphed pelt called "cross-fox".

I was glad I did a bit of research before I bought my camera. I wanted something that I could place near a game trail and hopefully capture images and video of whatever trotted by.  The website www.trailcampro.com was perfect for walking me through the options and finding the right brand, which I then found on sale at my local sportsman's store.  I felt a little odd buying something that was exclusively marketed to hunters, which was evidenced by the day-glow orange packaging plastered with an image of a stag with that "deer caught in headlights" look on the front.  But, no matter, the Bushnell Trophy Cam served my purposes just fine.  It could take photos or videos and it used an infrared light array to take night-shots so as not to frighten the wildlife.  However, I don't believe in the absolute stealth of this camera at night.  I have a growing portfolio of fox portraits that look like mugshots with glowing eyes aimed directly at the camera.  I'm not sure what the fox sees, but it sees something.  And some of the photos make it quite clear that whatever it sees is pretty unnerving.  The following series illustrates the wary behavior of the fox toward the camera while taking night-vision photos.

"Hello.  What's that?"

"Whatever it is, I'm not sure I like it."

"I'm gonna keep my eyes on you!"

Although fox are not supposed to be able to see infrared light, there is clearly something tipping it off to the presence of my camera.  Possibly a sensor light that comes on only at night when the infrared is activated.  Whatever it is, I'll be testing it out and trying to remedy the problem so as not to spook my subject anymore.  This is especially important because fox are crepuscular animals, which means they are most active during the low-light hours around dawn and at dusk (like a house cat).  This is also why I rarely see the fox, because I am more of a night-owl.  That being said, the photos of my foxes show that they don't necessarily hold to that time schedule.  While approximately half of the recorded images are at various times during the night, the other half are just as widely distributed during the broad daylight hours.  I can't help but smile when I realize that, on most days, the fox is probably watching me silently from his woodland habitat just yards from my patio.  It makes sense that he would be much more aware of my activities than I am of his.  For starters, I'm almost always within a hundred yards of my domicile whenever I'm at home, which makes me a pretty easy target.  But the fox seems to always be on the move.  He travels different trails, at different times, in search of food and potential respites for raising kits or escaping neighborhood dogs.  His daily range can cover miles of woods that are as familiar to him as his own tail.  In contrast, even though I've lived with the same backyard as the fox for my entire life, most of it is still a complete mystery to me.  For me, it's scenery outside my window.  For him, it's his living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen.  Of course he notices when something is different!

Another red fox visiting the unused den.

Despite my photographic intrusion into the foxes' territory, neither seems to be dissuaded from their usual routine.  Not my smell, nor the smell of my dog, who inevitably wanders out to the den to see what all the hubbub is about, keeps the fox from returning.  I have even captured images of each animal leaving their own odoriferous calling cards at the den within just minutes of each other.  But I don't want to push my luck.  On the off-chance that the two foxes visiting this den are preparing to raise a family there, I want to be sure that they feel safe to do so.  I don't doubt for a second that they would leave the den behind if myself or my dog came too close or disturbed too much.  So, I continue to observe with child-like wonder the secret sneekings of these beautiful animals with my "non-invasive" camera and hope that the foxes sense the benign nature of my intentions.  As Spring draws nearer, though, I'm making plans to re-charge the batteries and make less frequent visits to check its contents.  I'll give them their space and pray that they grace me with continued opportunities to watch their lives unfold.  Is it so far-fetched to imagine that they might be just as curious about us as we are of them?

What thoughts does a red fox have?