About three times a day, the dogs go bonkers and, as soon as they are let outside, they rush down to the creek. Sometimes they go charging down into it and come back wet and muddy. Sometimes they run up the side of it into the field. Sometimes they bark, sometimes they just race. Usually it’s because of a squirrel. But occasionally, it’s one of these guys. I’ve busted coyotes out in our yard several times. I yell at them to go away, and if the chickens are out, they just barely comply. I love them anyway.
The bobcat we don’t see so much. A neighbor says the bobcat had kits last summer for sure. So maybe we have more than one in the area. Again, I love them, even if they, too, take a chicken now and then.
Tag: wildlife
Underhill: Where I Write
Every place I’ve lived in Southern Illinois I’ve always been within earshot of a distant train—or better yet, coyotes.
Tim (my husband, singer-songwriter Tim Crosby) got me a couple trail cams for my birthday. Best. Present. Ever.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so excited about chicken-eating predators so near our free-range chickens. But I am. A bobcat!!
When I lived at Broken Branch with Merlin and Crocodile and Odin (horse, horse, dog, respectively) and my son was little, the barn door had blown down—and that was most of the wall. Before my then-landlord set it back on track, a bobcat moved into the barn. I never saw her, but neighbors did. I heard her one night—an unearthly screech! The neighbor suggested I call the IDNR, maybe have her removed. “No way,” I said. “I have no ‘possums, no raccoons, nothing in the barn.” She wouldn’t hurt the horses. So we had a nice relationship for a while.
Underhill, though, our home now is a berm home across from the Shawnee National Forest. A creek circles most of the back pasture where eventually we’ll have horses again. We’ve got lots of neighbors we never see. Enjoy!
Epiphany Ferrell 