wildlife

 Living here has it's perks.
We get to see this from our breakfast table each morning.

 And from the floor in our living room I can look up to see these beautiful mountains.
I spend a lot of time on the floor, changing Christian's diapers, cleaning up the kids' toys, reading books, picking up about 6000 beads that Nick likes to throw around, cleaning up the toys again....etc.

It sure helps my mood to be able to look outside and see something so beautiful while I'm in the trenches of young motherhood.

And we get to watch lots of interesting wildlife.

There's a bald eagle who lives nearby, and several times each month I see him swooping down over the golf course and soaring into the canyon.

We have a family of quail that like to wander down our river bed in the backyard.

Canadian geese have built a nest in the golf course pond just around the corner from us.

We have all sorts of birds, deer, coyotes, rabbits, 

And then, there's these guys:

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep.

We've watched them up on the mountainside and down in our golf course for the past three years.

Herds of them, grazing peacefully, so fun to see.

Until this guy went crazy:

The picture is from my friend Allison, because I was too chicken to take one of him at my house.

For weeks this spring this one ram has terrorized the neighborhood. I have no idea what got into him, but he'd climb up onto people's back porch and ram into the glass doors. He also rammed into cars and garbage cans.  I watched him run down the streets, approaching people's porches and wandering their backyards.

One morning, I was still in bedwith Christian, nursing him, and Ellie was downstairs alone eating the breakfast Kent had gotten her before he left for work. 

I heard a loud thump, and then she shrieked. 

I assumed she'd just dropped something.

But then she came running upstairs to talk to Nicholas, who was in the playroom.

"Nick! That was SO AWESOME! A really friendly goat wanted to come say 'Hi'! He knocked on our door and then he jumped over the sandbox! It was so cool! Come see!"

And I'm thinking, No. No, let's not go see. 

I'm also thinking, Thank goodness Ellie didn't open the door so he could say "Hi." 

Honestly, I was terrified. But I tried not to let the kids know that. Ellie was being incredibly brave, but Nicholas has a tendency to overreact. (wonder where he got that...)

I made the kids come in my room and close the door and I called the sheriff's office to get animal control out here. And we just listened and waited while the mad ram thumped against our door over and over and over.  

Eventually the thumping stopped and I got brave enough to leave the room. By the time animal control showed up, the ram was long gone, but I showed them which direction I'd seen him go off into the neighborhood.

I don't know if they got him, but he hasn't been around since then.

Living in the mountains can be pretty exciting!