See Beautiful: Our Wildlife

Today is "See Beautiful" Friday. As I am trying to recover from surgery, I've been sedentary compared to my usual lifestyle. Since my surgery, Shyla and I have taken an easy hike each morning. It's disconcerting to feel how incredibly fatigued my body is... but I managed to make it to one of my trail cameras yesterday.

From the trail camera, I was absolutely delighted to see that a tenacious bobcat had visited a spot that I've been monitoring for about four years. This bobcat defines "beautiful" for me.

The wildlife that inhabit our area are one of the most beautiful aspects of it. I took the next photo with a handheld camera about a year ago. I felt so lucky to see such a gloriously beautiful coyote bathed in warm sunlight. I had a very long lens so I was a good distance from him.

It seems that many mountain residents love the wildlife but there is still a faction who view our relationship with wildlife as adversarial. A photo of a coyote taken in our neck of the woods can provoke a lengthy discussion with lots of comments about how dangerous coyotes have become. My opinion is that the coyotes have not become more dangerous. Rather, more people live in the coyotes' habitat so there are more sets of human eyes to glimpse coyotes. Moreover, coyotes are more accustomed to seeing us.

I wish that people could accept that we've chosen to live where lots of predators reside - so we need to take appropriate precautions rather than trying to get rid of the wildlife.

Some of you might remember that someone shot and killed a coyote on our land a few years ago. When I called the Division of Wildlife about it, I was told that the only illegal aspect of the killing was that the shooter might have trespassed on our land. I learned that coyotes are considered "varmints" who can be shot at any time of year. Personally, when I look at the photos above, I see a beautiful animal and not a varmint.

Aside from our black bears, I love getting trail camera photos of mountain lions the most. They are so beautiful, with all the power and strength contained in their amazing bodies.

I love this photo because it's a juvenile mountain lion. Notice the faded stripe inside his front right limb and notice how big his ears appear compared to his head. I suspect that he was looking for his mom in this photo. Just today, I discovered that someone had stolen this particular photo from my blog, had blacked out my copyright watermark, and was using it as an ad. At first, I was nothing but outraged. Then, I realized that it might be a sign that peoples' attitudes toward mountain lions are shifting. Perhaps more people see a beautiful animal in the photo above rather than a scary beast who must be eliminated.

I believe that the co-existence of large predators with us is a beautiful thing. I "See Beautiful" whenever I capture photos of the predators who live in our forest.

Last, but certainly not least on Valentine's Day, the Duo is beautiful to me. In the past month, as R has been recovering from his surgery, I find the two of them snuggled up together almost all the time. Sometimes, they're sharing a sun puddle, and sometimes they're simply lying snuggled together on a dog bed.

It makes my heart sing to see such a beautiful bond between them.