Thursday, August 10, 2017

Company


They never call.  They just drop by.  And expect to be fed.

When I lived in the suburbs, it seemed to me all the bears were gone.  And much of the wildlife.  But here at my cabin the branches swaying out my bathroom window signal company has arrived.  This orphaned cub in the photo above has come three times this summer for servings of cherries.  He will come for apples next and then plums.  On the slope which I walk up to my hillside garden barrels, there is a pile of eleven plum pits - the remains of what last fall was a pile of bear scat.  


The deer sweep up my road, stop to browse on the ivy, and slip down to the river for a drink.  My dog listens for them and hopes for a sighting.  Their company a diversion.

        
Wolves, moose and a cougar all make my mountains their location for meals.  I am surprised at the diversity.  A moose was born just up my road a half-a-mile a month or so ago.  A cougar took a goat for a mid-night meal last week at a hillside meadow close by, and wolves feasted on elk in the high snowy meadows this winter.


Even while sitting in the river on a hot day, company arrives.  Water snakes sunning on the rocks by my hand.  Fry - slashes of black - feeding on some watery bounty beneath my feet.

 
A Pacific Slope flycatcher nested in the eaves of my cabin and would sing a little ps-seet, pt-sick, seet as it flew about feasting on bugs above my patio.  It was joined by a family of violet green swallows, the young ones fledging in tight circles past my chair.

Swallowtails fluttered past on their way to flowers in my garden.  My company is good.    


Even my dog gets into the mode of dropping in and eating, as if she were company.  In the past couple of weeks, she had invited herself to eat bacon grease, popcorn, a coffee and chocolate granola bar and dried eggs.  Some company is bad.