On one of the first evenings that we were home from the desert, we got a double treat. We saw the elk herd near our house during the "golden" hour before sunset when their fur glowed gorgeously!
This young bull watched us for a while as he chewed and walked at the same time.
I loved his final very curious look at us.
More of the herd was nearby but they were spread out too much to give you a view of them all.
I had the feeling that they were breathing a sigh of relief to finally have green grass and warm sunshine.
After that, we hiked up to watch the sunset over the mountains with the Labraduo. It was glorious!
After a little while, the orange morphed to a deep pink.
And then the pink directly over the mountains got even brighter!
As we walked away, the pink was becoming crimson, as dusk moved into the forest.
That evening reminded me of how much I love living here in the mountains even if it sometimes snows in May!
But no animal around here can come close to the sprint speed of a mountain lion. One came through our area last night, feeding on a deer who he'd killed a couple of days ago.
He appeared at dusk.
And approached the camera warily.
For some reason, he looks young to me.
Then, he stood up tall and peered at the camera.
I'd found his deer carcass and I'd staked it out with a trail camera but the scavengers filled my entire memory card before this guy arrived last night.
I believe that the bees on the carcass were what caused Shyla's allergic reaction. She was in that area when she was bitten although I didn't see the bees all over the carcass until yesterday. She's been smart enough to stay away from the bees since then. They are the oddest looking bees I've ever seen. If I managed to get a good photo of one, I may share it to see if any of you know about what kind of bee it is.
Despite the might of a mountain lion, I love having them in our forest!
When I look at the wider landscape in the desert, it appears almost impossible that life could flourish there. The rock formations are gorgeous but don't look hospitable to plants.
I love the color of the rock formations, so much like the glowing chocolate of Shyla.
When we explore the desert world more closely, we find beautiful flowers in the nooks and crannies between the rocks. This is one my favorites - the Claret Cactus - which is growing in a dirt spot between the rocks.
Despite severe drought in the Utah desert, the Claret Cacti were blooming strongly!
The blooms' red against the blue sky with cacti spines all around them caught my eye many times.
In some areas that we visited, the paintbrush were also in full bloom.
Some flowers, in the "4 O'Clock" family, open their blossoms late in the day and through the night. This prevents them from losing too much water to evaporation in the hot sun. This one looks very closed at mid-day.
But each of those white balls becomes a flower at night when it opens.
The flashy purple member of that family opens its flowers wide late in the afternoon.
Every time we visit the desert, I am awed to find these plants so strong in such a tough environment. It looks so dramatically tough - but they manage to bloom even in drought years.
I am very thankful that Shyla's allergic reaction is dissipating. Last night, after her emergency injections wore off, her face started to swell again. Fortunately, a dose of oral Benadryl did the job, and her face was almost normal this morning.
Taken among the red rocks of the desert
Although it's not a good day for taking photos here at home (it's rainy and dark), her
face looks almost normal today, like it did in the desert. Her energy was great on our morning bike
ride through a mixture of rain and ice pellets with the temperature in the 30's. I was soaked and frozen by the end but Shyla seemed to love it. After a ride like that one, I'm pining for the desert!
Taken during a windy sunset in the desert
Our vet is making us a little kit of meds to just in case Shyla has an allergic reaction when we can't get to the vet fast enough, like when we were in the desert (all of these photos are from our recent trip there). I wish that we knew what caused it yesterday. It was dramatic.
We did see a scary animal in the desert during an evening walk on a stormy looking evening. It wasn't this human - I just liked his silhouette!
It was a scorpion. We'd never seen one before except in the deep darkness of night. Fortunately, the Runner spotted it before we blundered into it.
We don't think that it was an especially venomous one but we're still glad that no one was bitten. That could have caused quite a reaction.
After that little bit of excitement, we watched the sun set behind the canyon walls.
The desert is such a raw and harsh place. Yet, when we really explore it, we find pockets of beauty, both in the sky and on the ground.
I already want to go back again!
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Yesterday, Shyla's face swelled up during an allergic reaction to something she encountered outside in the morning. Her face became a bit more dramatically swollen than this on the way to the vet.
We spent part of the day at the Emergency Vet, and Shyla is better after treatment. I am hoping that there are no repercussions in terms of seizures.
I really needed one *normal* day to get caught up. Of course, without hesitation, we let our day be dictated be Shyla's veterinary needs... so now I'm even further behind! I'm giving up on catching up soon!
Our young male black bear was drinking from a spring when he noticed my trail camera. Unfortunately, unlike many bears, he didn't just sniff it. He killed it!
When I arrived at the site, I saw my cam broken into two pieces, a padlock pried open, and the front part of the camera on the ground. At first, I was furious, thinking that a bad human had done it. Then, I noticed that the memory card was still in the camera, and that made me think that maybe it wasn't a human who destroyed it.
Indeed, the memory card showed that "Bandit", the young male bear who I introduced you to yesterday had attacked the camera. I felt so much better that a bear had destroyed the camera rather than a human. After all, I put my trail cams right in the midst of where bears live out their lives - so this type of thing is expected. Young ones like Bandit get curious, and they use their strength to fully investigate a camera. It was my mistake not to have the camera in a bear case.
Bandit
The trusty camera kept recording video until the "end". The two parts in the photo below were attached to each other before the cam was attacked... I wish that I'd thought to take a photo of the camera at the scene but I was a little too rattled to remember to do that.
Here's the video of Bandit killing the camera (from the camera's point of view) plus a video of him attempting the same thing with another camera on a snowy day a couple of weeks later. I think that bear security cases are becoming essential due to this youngster!
It's rather shocking and scary to see Bandit's teeth attacking the camera from the point of view of the camera. I am generally not worried about bears when I'm in the forest because they are so timid. This video gave me some idea of the power they possess. We are lucky that they are normally timid!
While we were innocently playing around in the desert, a certain bear was plotting revenge for my "spying" on him with my trail cameras. But, we had no idea...
We were so relaxed, having no idea what might be underway at home.
It turned out that a youngish male bear was visiting areas where my trail cameras are located. I got fun video of one of his silly attempts to mark a tree. Milton also marked the same tree, which gives you a chance to compare a mature dominant male bear to a young adult male bear who really doesn't stand a chance of competing (yet).
It turned out that Bandit's mischief was expensive to me. I discovered it today, and I'll get to work on a video to share it with you. I'll give you the hint that I gave him the name "Bandit" after finding his handiwork today.
For now, here's an introduction to Bandit. He's a silly youngster who isn't very good at marking trees yet and isn't anywhere near as strong or skilled as a bear like Milton.
If you have trouble watching the short video here, check it out on Youtube.
Tomorrow, I hope to show you why I decided to name him "Bandit".
On another note, I've had a lot of trouble getting caught up with my work since getting home. I hope to catch up with all of you very soon! My apologies for being so slow.
In the desert, Shyla seemed ready to sleep as soon as the sun went down.
Indeed, as we all slept, the Milky Way rose each morning around 2AM. I programmed my camera to take photos of it until dawn. Here it was rising over a canyon wall, just barely visible. Over the next three hours, it rotated through the sky gorgeously.
For a serene moment on this Sunday, watch and listen to this time lapse video of the Milky Way rotating through the sky. The video condenses 3 hours of Milky Way viewing into a bit more than a minute. If you run into trouble watching it here, you can view it on Youtube.
One of my favorite things about all of our camping trips is seeing every minute of every day outdoors. Seeing the rose colored sunset light against the red rock makes the colors glow...
Seeing the sun set on a distant horizon...
Then watching dusk fall and the first stars start to sparkle...
And then, in the dead of night, waking up and seeing the stars overhead. In case anyone else loves the Milky Way like I do, it is alive and well!
When living indoors, it feels too cold and like too much trouble to go outside at 3AM to look for the Milky Way. And, in many places, there's too much light pollution to see it. When camping in the desert, I soak it up.
We just returned from a sojourn in the Utah desert. It was mostly peaceful and relaxing. We managed to miss one of the big heavy spring snowstorms here in Colorado. That made me smile. The best spring snowstorms in Colorado are the ones when I'm away in the desert!
I'll keep this post brief but two wonderful things hit us while we were in the desert sunshine. One was that R was running a lot and very fast but he didn't limp once. We could never discern any hitch in his stride.
The vets told us that it took a year to get the full benefit of CUE surgery. Now I believe it. I'm so grateful that we did it, and we gave him these pain-free days of romping. Every day, week, month, and year of a dog's life is precious, and we feel as if we managed to get him more fun time in his life through CUE surgery.
The second great thing was that Shyla seemed to return toward normal, with the side effects of the phenobarb reaching a level that I'd call acceptable. I can still see a bit of a deficit in her spunk and endurance but it's small price to pay for controlling her seizures. She had no seizures on our trip despite a couple of stressful days and the general stress of traveling.
She also reached some peace with wearing boots - a miracle!
As for her recovery from being belted by the evil woman out on our trails, Shyla seems to have concluded that women on trails are scary. She won't approach any women on trails, even ones who she knows. If a woman appears, Shyla hides. In contrast, she will greet men, as long as they aren't paying attention to her - which is exactly how she dealt with all people on the trails before she was hit by that evil woman.
I hope that we never see that woman again. It turns out that Shyla isn't her only canine victim, and the neighborhood is tightening its borders to make sure that the evil woman doesn't trespass again to get into the little sanctuary behind our houses.
Now, I am excited to be able to visit my friends' blogs. We had no cell service for most of our trip so I've been away for too long!
Upon returning from the desert, we immediately knew that the bears were getting active. As we headed down our driveway, we saw that a bear had knocked over both of our bear-proof garbage cans, and he'd rolled one into the forest near our house. We knew that the males were waking up before we left but it always takes a while before they start actively seeking food.
This year, bear activity is starting about 5 weeks earlier than last year, probably due to our mild spring.
The day after we arrived home, I headed for an area thick with black bears most years. I expected that I might find a trail camera video of male black bears. However, as you might remember, female bears who are raising cubs can't leave their dens for another month or so. The cubs aren't ready to walk any distance yet so I didn't expect to have footage of any sows. Last year, my cams at the den showed that the newborn cubs didn't set paw outside the den until mid-April.
My hopes were realized - and with my favorite male bear. Milton, the huge male with a white patch on his chest, had lazily hung around a spot where I have multiple trail cams, letting us get a glimpse into the life of a bear whose behavior isn't being affected by fear of humans nearby.
Here's Milton's first sighting two years ago.
In the video from this April, Milton first danced at a popular bear-marking tree. Then, he stood, listening to the world while urinating in front of the cam. Next, he stood in a spring-fed puddle and appeared to listen to the birds and squirrels. Finally, he marked the nearby tree again, before heading off to visit other key spots in the forest.
You might remember that Milton was very badly injured a few years ago. He was not bearing weight on one front paw, and he disappeared for months at the end of the summer. I feared that he'd died. However, he returned and appears to be getting stronger and stronger over the years. I'm so thankful to see him so fat and healthy, after four months in a den!
Looking up a canyon - I feel so small in the desert and that's part of what I love
A scenic campsite
I love the desert. We missed several windows of opportunity to visit the Utah desert earlier this spring while Shyla was not well as she adapted to strong anti-seizure meds. We finally felt that she was well enough to go to the desert for the last half of April. In fact, her return toward normalcy seemed to accelerate while we were in the desert!
The desert makes me feel tiny in a huge a universe - and that's one of the things that I love about it. Most of all, I love days spent camping with just our pack, relaxing in nature's beauty and sometimes its raw power.
Just about a year ago, the plans finally came together for R's elbow surgery. After all the hard work to set up the surgery, I felt fear about the actual event. I'd been the one who'd made this surgery happen. What would I do if the surgery failed or even made him worse? I'd feel guilt beyond description.
The Runner helped me push that fear out of my mind, and R had his surgery. As you all know who have followed this blog, the recovery takes a full year so we are just now coming to the end of the recovery phase. We do exercises with him daily, and we are continuing to see him get better.
It makes my heart sing to see our boisterous and exuberant black dog run like he loves to do!
He can run so hard that his tongue lolls out to the side.
And, along with his elbow healing, he's become such a joy to ride my bike with because he's so well behaved. I think that's just maturity, and perhaps a stronger bond with me due to all the rehab exercises that we've done together daily for almost a year!
I am so thankful that his surgery turned out to be a success. He's happier, and we're happier. Can we ask for anything more? We will treasure each day that we can play in the wild world with him!
I think that we might keep celebrating R's amazing recovery for a long time! I hope that I don't bore you with the celebrations!!!
