Mountain babies

Ah, for just another week of this lovely weather before the dreaded 3H’s take over. Alas, that is not to be. So I took advantage of the good weather this past weekend to wander around the mountain as much as I could. Once the hot weather kicks in, my walks are shorter and often less enjoyable. No one—and especially not me—likes hiking when covered in sweat.

What I saw on my forays were the first appearances of a whole variety of mountain babies, most of them as clueless as only babies can be. Everything from just-fledged barn swallows to goslings to fawns let me approach much closer than their parents were comfortable with. The youngsters are so clueless that even a dive-bombing or a snorting parent didn’t budge them. Kids! What are you going to do?

The antlers of the male deer are in velvet already. At one point this weekend I saw a nice buck calmly grazing in someone’s front yard (they weren’t home). It was the middle of the afternoon and the deer looked as calm as someone’s cow. He looked as though he did that every day and maybe he does. Sometimes it’s not just the babies that are clueless.

And speaking of babies—tomorrow marks the first session of adventure camp for me. I’ll spend the day down at a really nice stream with at least six groups of kids. We’ll catch crayfish and frogs, probably salamanders, too. I hope the wood tortoise that was such a hit last summer is still around. I’m going to have more kids at one time than I did last year. So this noon I ran out and bought more minnow nets—great for reaching across the stream to get at balky crayfish—and another bucket for temporarily holding our prisoners. As a result, I won’t be online tomorrow, but I will have a report on how things went on Wednesday.