Turkeys, Deer, More Turkeys, & More Deer

There have been wild turkeys all over the place the past several weeks, there is a flock (?) of about 19 of them that come in our yard or driveway nearly every morning. Once in a while they will be near the road when we come home from picking Ethan up after school. I'm pretty excited about this because I didn't think I was going to get to see any of them, but now it seems like they are around almost every other day. A few weeks ago the thunder & lightening were going insane, I thought the house was going to be struck any moment the thunder was so loud it seemed like it was right outside the door. So we decided to step outside on the back patio to watch the lightening...probably not the most intelligent thing to do, but the lightening was amazing & for some reason the turkeys were nearby in the yard, just gobbling away as though there was nothing going on.

Last Sunday I was going a bit stir-crazy, so I convinced Jeff that we should go on a little drive and show the boys the pretty fall colors. One of the ladies from church who lives farther up the mountain from us said that there are usually moose about 10 miles or so from her place, so we headed up that way. There were deer & turkeys hanging out in the field just down the road from us, & unfortunatley deer & turkeys are about all the wildlife we saw that day.

Our "little drive" ended up lasting 2 hours as we drove all the way up our mountain, winding, twisting, & turning along the mountain road. We came out onto a Highway that led to 2 small towns, so we decided to drive through them & check them out. It was a pretty drive, but by the time we got home I was hanging my head out the window feeling carsick.

Logging is a huge industry here & we saw the results of it along the way. Pretty strange to break out of the condensed forest into this:

When we were coming around a corner I saw a huge black animal right next to the road & I grabbed Jeff's leg as I gasped, thinking that the bear was going to attack as we drove by. Then it lifted it's head & I realized it was only a cow.

I hadn't expected to see a cow all the way out there, but he was happily munching away & didn't seem to notice we were even there.

This deer decided to take a Sunday stroll of his own, right through town.

More pictures of the turkeys, they were running alongside the road when we got back to the house, & then they were in our yard the next morning.

Oh, I forgot to mention that we DID end up catching a glimpse of a moose on our Sunday drive...

He didn't do much, though.

Kamden has been doing his best to track the turkeys so that he can put one on our Thanksgiving table...but they are rather elusive. And they are out of season, so it's a good thing he hasn't had a successful hunt yet.