Boss Squirrel

I have holes and tunnels in my yard. Mind you, there's two feet of snow on the ground, and the holes and tunnels are in the snow, made by the Boss Squirrel of the front yard.  When I watch the birds at the feeders, there is Boss Squirrel with his head poking above the snow for a look around. His head disappears and seconds later, he reappears farther down the lawn. He rushes to the trees and runs up the branches - here and there - chasing the birds from the trees and feeders. More birds are arriving every day, more birds spread out in 10 trees, but Boss Squirrel is persistent.

Even the large Common Ravens don't escape Boss Squirrel's wrath. As they feed on the fallen sunflower seeds, they hop into the air to escape this crazy creature running amok in their midst and escaping into the brush or up a tree. From the tree, Boss Squirrel will jump down into the flock of ravens, making them scatter. Eventually, the ravens leave to eat in quieter surroundings such as the garbage dump or grocery store parking lot.

Boss Squirrel has a difficult life. On the house roof,  I blocked the narrow space between two roof lines where Boss Squirrel was squeezing through to cache his pine cones.  Our truck repair centre cleaned out his huge nest that he had built behind the glove compartment by crawling through the truck engine. I took away the small towel that he had pulled out from under the garage door (that was filling a space caused by ground imbalance) and was tearing apart for bedding. Some of his holes in the snowbanks along the driveway were covered when I shoveled snow. Once, he barely escaped me stepping on him when I stepped off the snow path through the lawn. His squeak and rapid movement warned me to tread carefully.

There's Boss Squirrel now, eating on the sunflower seeds that I scattered far down the driveway. Closer to the house, also eating on sunflower seeds, are two juncos and a common red poll. Oh, no - Boss Squirrel sees them and he's charging over twenty feet to scatter the birds. He settles down to eat the seed, content that he's the boss of the front yard.

Moose Excitement

This past Sunday, on a sunny day, my husband and I drove up the Robert Campell Highway which runs north from the Alaska Highway. Just a short drive, 30 kms - past lakes and ponds that slept under deep snow blankets, past swamps where pussy willows decorated the willow branches, past where I saw the great grey owl alongside the road last November, past Tom Creek where small pools of flowing water surrounded by ice glittered in the sunshine.  Nine snow buntings burst into the air from a patch of open ground, swirled as a flock a few feet above ground and landed farther up the road to start the search again for fallen seeds hidden amongst the dead grass.

We followed the ribbon of pavement that lay between wide snow-filled ditches that stretched to the edge of the forest. A quiet drive:  no traffic, no more birds flocking upwards, no foxes walking on the frozen snow in search of mice; then we saw the moose.

At the 24 km mark of the highway, an old gravel pit sits on the side of the highway and at the far edge of this clearing is an opening that signals the start of an old road that leads into a logging site, now abandoned. Willows and brush have narrowed the road to become a trail used by animals, and in winter, we see tracks in the snow from the old road, through the clearing and onto the highway.  As we drove by the clearing, I looked back to peek at the trail and to my surprise, moose were standing at the far edge of the clearing having stopped to watch the vehicle noise they heard on the highway.

"Stop, stop. There's moose there."

My husband backs up the truck and I grab the binoculars. "There's three moose standing there."

As Barry looked through the binoculars, I slowly, quietly left the truck and took photos from the highway. The moose ran into the forest and disappeared. We drove up the highway to our turn-around point, and on our way back, we slowed at the gravel pit to see if the moose were there. No moose; no fresh tracks . We drove onward, and after two kms and seeing no tracks coming out of the ditch, I had resigned myself to not seeing the moose.  We rounded a bend, and there they were. All three of them in the ditch heading for the highway. The moose stopped when they saw us, and we stopped to watch from a distance and take more photos. They seemed frozen in the snow. The spell was broken when a vehicle came toward us, and the moose rushed back into the forest. We saw them bunched together in the trees, but they seemed unwilling to move while we watched them, so we drove away.

This was the first time we'd seen three moose together, and the sighting was unexpected, which made the moment more exciting.  I feel the same excitment when an unexpected twist happens in my story, and I'm on an adventure unforseen.  One of the reasons why I keep writing.

Caribou in Winter

Starting in October, the caribou move from their summer mountain range to their winter range around the community of Watson Lake, Yukon. We see them on the highways as they eat the salt that's mixed with the sand spread on the highways during the winter. When vehicles come along the highway, the caribou usually dash into the ditches and trees; most often they'll return right away to keep eating salt. At times, when driving along the highways, if you look carefully into the forest, you may see grazing amongst the trees, caribou cleverly disguised in the same white and brown tones as the snow and trees. Or you may see caribou crossing a frozen snow-packed lake in single file. This winter while skiing on a trail a few kilometers from the highway, I saw fresh caribou tracks in the snowmobile tracks, so I knew they could be near. A warm breeze was softening snow mounds on the tall spruce and pine trees, and around me snow was cascading to the ground bouncing off branches as it fell. The cracking sounds reminded me of caribou walking through the dry bush in the fall, and I would stop, listen and look in hopes of seeing the animals, but nothing. When I did see a caribou, it was walking through deep snow in the forest 50 feet from the trail. The animal had seen me before I saw it, and it was walking quickly through the snow to reach a second animal that I spied through the trees. The two of them rushed away from me - not making any sounds - silent ghosts of the forest.