The black bears around here are all pretty unintimidatingly small.
Once I was in northern Ontario picking blueberries. They were in the distance when I started, but I zoned out and when I looked I was surrounded by huge bears. They don't make noise on the soft soil of blueberry barrens. They were all around me, keeping a polite distance, pretending not to notice me, eating blueberries. I already knew not to look at them hard, so I just went back to picking blueberries. It's amazing how comfortable I was with all those bears. Everything was fine, we were just all enjoying the berries and it felt quite companionable.
There are coyotes here. The best thing to see is when their pups are nearly grown and start trying to advance their hunting skills to go for ducks. They start off with field mice (just jump on the place where you hear it rustling) and then the rabbits. The rabbits are easy because there are a lot of stupid young ones around when the coyotes are that age. A rabbit can smell you, but it usually doesn't see you if you hold still. Same as a coyote. So you can creep up on it, taking a few steps every time its head is in the grass. But ducks can't smell you at all, and will usually see you even if you're standing still. So I'll see these young coyotes try to catch ducks by sneaking up downwind of them a few steps at a time. When he gets too close, the ducks will all take off with their wings whistling, quacking, and the young coyote will startle and look all flummoxed, "Woah! Why did that happen?!" Father coyote is usually watching too, and he looks as if he thinks this is as funny as I do.
(Show me a dog, I'll tell you what it's thinking, but I can't usually do that looking at a person.)
14 Oct 2008, 4:04 pm
