I’ve seen thousands of elk and deer in my lifetime. I’ve eaten more deer and elk than many people will ever see. (It is good meat, btw, and I don’t notice “gamey” tastes but that might be due to the fact that I’ve grown up eating it.) I don’t eat red meat as a rule but I really love venison.

I digress.

It doesn’t matter how many deer or elk that I’ve seen. Whenever I see one up close, I’m literally blown away by their majestic presence. I get excited. I want to call everyone and tell them what I’ve seen.

In the last week, the elk in our area have been really active and have been coming into our small enclave. We are not in town and it’s probably safer for them to come out of the forest and onto our streets. We tend to have a lot of deciduous green trees and those are much more preferable than the conifers that populate this area.

My neighborhood also has a large amoung of aggressive dogs that are not conducive to humans let alone animals so I’m surprised that they even venture in.

Yesterday, I’m driving home from running some errands and I slow down to go onto the dirt road that leads up to my house. I look to the right and there are HUGE elk standing down by Warren’s house. Huge. I’m awed by it. First, it’s 11:30 in the morning. Elk are usually not out at that time, coming out only at dawn and dusk. Secondly, it is just so cool to see them standing there, in broad daylight, eating trees that Warren’s landlord has so lovingly cultivated. Ok, it’s not cool that they’re eating these precious trees but it’s cool to SEE them!

I rushed up to my house to call Warren and tell him to go outside to see them. He says that while my voice is blaring over the answering machine (because he wouldn’t pick up!), he’s trying to sneak outside and get pictures. Heh. :-D Well, I didn’t scare them off with my message and he did get pictures with an SLR. As you can see, I did get them scanned and posted. You can click on the pictures for a larger image. I wanted to make them small enough for anyone’s connection to load fairly quickly.

I just have to say that it was a cool experience. I know a lot of you are urbanites but there are some benefits to living the country life. Oh…and Branna…I was excited about sheep the other day. laughing I’m sure I’d get pretty excited about cows, too. ;-)