The huge wild hog I hiked up to at Joyce Kilmer (NC) was the ugliest, meanest looking thing I've ever seen in the woods. The big arse 4 foot Timber Rattler we walked up to on top of Shortoff Mountain (Linville Gorge, NC) was a distant 2nd.

Oh, yea forgot the BACK woods guys cutting a logging road at the base of Shortoff Mt my Outward Bound group hiked into in 1981. My compatriots from Yankee land couldn't understand a word they said. But the water they offered me was really cold, really nice.

Today I saw a white elk. Not an albino because its head and shoulders were sort of gray, but the rest was a dirty white. Had two calves with it, but they were both normal colored.

Bald Eagles, Cougar, Black bear, Bobcat, Beaver, Deer, coyote, marmot, Elk, deer, Fox, (face to face with) Raccoon, (face to face with) ((Too much sleeping under the stars...)), Weasles, Snakes (Rattlesnakes (steeped on a baby rattler, killed it on accident)), Had a chipmunk crall up my pants, and Bigfoot. And Im only 18...

mrh - sounds like the elk was hypomelanistic. I saw a hypomelanistic bird in my backyard once.
My in-laws have been seeing a lot of melanistic deer that are dark brown and lacking normal coloration patterns (fawn spots). Apparently they are not too rare (8-21%) in south central Texas.

My highlights this summer are two baby javelinas and two baby Great-horned owls.

As I was headed back to the car from May Lake I saw a chipmunk and either a Pine Marten or Pacific Fisher, don't know exactly. . . . . Oh yeah, the chipmunk was dinner as it was in the Marten / Fisher's mouth.

OK, technically I didn't see this animal - I only felt it.

Last Saturday I was climbing the Cottonwood Ridge in UT when a fly flew into my ear - not the outer part, but all the way into the hole! I could feel it buzzing for a while in there, trapped, before it passed out.

I couldn't knock or blow it out, and my friend Joe couldn't see it, so all I could do was hike until it woke up (about 10 minutes later) and wriggle out!

Next time put your headlamp on and shine it in your ear. It will probably free itself since most insects fly towards the light. I read it years ago in backpacker magazine. I've tried it once and it worked.

Sweet! That'll save me the trouble of putting on my helmet and banging my head against the rock! <img src="/message_board/images/laugh.gif" width=15>

Today I've seen a beautiful roe deer while mountain biking on a forest trail on the E face of Reajo Alto, Sierra de Guadarrama, Madrid

I had hummingbirds zoom by my head and growl on saturday. The first couple of times it scared me. I did not know hummingbirds growled!

Last Sunday was some kind of a record for me. I spent about 5 hours in Albion Basin at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon about 15 miles East of Salt Lake City. I was climbing in snow off trail toward the ridge at the base of Devils Castle. Before reaching the ridge it started raining, then hail and lightning. We started hiking down in the storm and didn't make the ridge but it was an incredable day for animals. We saw five mountain goats within a hundred feet of us, a buck with a huge rack at about a hundred yards, two doe at about 25 yards, five more deer further away, two marmots less than a hundred feet away, two bull moose at about 150 yards, two bull moose and a female at less than 50 feet, and several ground squirrels.

I found a small herd of six Bighorn Sheep on Thursday just below the summit of Mount Baldy. I've been hoping for a close look at these animals for years, but hadn't had any luck until then.

Nadie and me saw a fox yesterday, when it crossed in front of my car when coming back from mountain biking on Sierra de la Puebla. It was running and jumped to the top of a 1 meter (or higher) wall so easily

We have seen foxes when driving home from the mountains in the last climbs that we've done in Sistema Central

Thomas Canty--cool! I saw a herd of Bighorn rams in the Rae Lakes area once. (Kings Canyon). I took a photo of them, though they're very hard to see since they camouflage well against granite talus.

About a month ago I saw a Pine Martin. Usually when I've seen them before, they're always running after prey, never holding still. However this one stood on top of a small boulder and stared at me for some time. Even better--it was just up the creek from my house!

An animal that not many people see but I got closely acquainted with is a Bush-Tailed Woodrat. I thought they were supposed to prefer higher-altitude talus fields, but one decided to take up residence under our shed! He *ate the garden*--branches off Aspen trees, every leaf on every shrub and herbaceous perennial...I thought we had a herd of deer making nightly visits. The woodrat would bite off branches of his favored plants and leave them in a pile in a sunny place. The following night he'd come back and take them somewhere. We eventually discovered he'd been putting the plants he gathered in a pile under our shed. The pile was huge!
He looked like a Deer Mouse on steroids--quite cute.