Injured Or Sick Crow

Today when i went to take JuJu the donkey for a walk, we came upon a big crow laying on the ground. At first I thought it was dead, i thought the movement in it's body was orchestrated by a million maggots and bugs eating it's insides... till I realized it's eye was actually blinking at me. I bent down and immediately touched it, so the black crow flapped it's good wing and favored the bad one that appeared to have scrapes on it.
I don't know much about crows, but after nursing two sick chickens this winter until their death it seemed the end for the crow was near. Pointing it's head into the air, something called "star gazing"... a creepy spiritual sort of movement they do when life is leaving their body. I still took it to my spring water to see if it had interest in drinking, and it did. That gave me a glimmer of hopeless hope.

I put the crow on some leaves in a box where it could be peaceful and safe, I started feeding it with a dropper- water and mushed up food, rice milk... anything it seemed to like.

It knew when i was going to feed it, and opened it's mouth like a baby in a nest.

Eventually it's one eye that wouldnt open, opened wide and it became very alert, less lethargic. But still the head turned around, pointing to the sky continued.....

My cat toots was curious about who was the latest patient in the blue box...

JuJu the donkey was more jealous the curious... she tried knocking the box over, stepped on my camera and also tried stealing the mushed up food for the crow.

Then once I spent far too long helping the crow, JuJu of course ran away!

The beautiful crow is still blinking it's eye at me, still breathing... but I expect not for long.

xoxoxoox

Skinning A Chipmunk

Another case of "oh my god look what the cat dragged in" but instead of living my life "sin after sin" against nature I realized this nearly untouched but dead chipmunk would be the perfect opportunity to learn to skin an animal. It seemed like such a waste that my cat killed it without even eating it...even though I know various bugs and some other forest animal could scavenge the body.
No better school though then the school of life, alone, with no teacher to show you the right way, just silly survival books with crappy drawings on skinning small critters.

I tied the chipmunk with hemp twine to a pine stick I found on the ground. Then I hung it up for better leverage.

I won't lie, I was trying to multi-task while doing this... I was on the phone with my sister, and going back and forth with my donkey giving her ginger candies. Which is why I probably made my first mistake...

I thought I'd just cut down the belly, but it was hard to penetrate the skin and when I pushed hard enough, some organs started poppin' out like bubble gum slowly filling with air. Then blood dripped and I was totally unsure if I was doing it right...

I took it down to take some time to think, and realized having it hanging up gave the tension, pull I needed to actually cut into the skin. And that I needed to cut somewhere else.

THE SUCCESS:

I decided to cut around the feet (full circle) then a line up each inner thigh all the way across.

And PULL!

and pull HARDER... the skin pealed off.I realized that puncturing the belly was a bad mistake, because the more I had pulled the skin, the more organs were falling out, the more blood...which got on the fur. I left the rest of the chipmunk for the creatures of the forest, away from my porch.

I had to rinse the blood off the chipmunk fur in the kitchen sink, then put it out to dry.

I am really kinda amazed at how simple this is. If any of ya'll have done it before I would really love tips from a expert!

Also, any ideas on what can be made with tiny chipmunk fur? I was thinking about a bracelet, but wish I could think of something more functional.

XOXoxxoxo (dont worry I washed my hands before these hugs and kisses!)

Animal Tracking: Who's Scat Is That?

I might need ya'lls help! You see I found this scat about a week ago and can't quite seem to identify who poop'ed this one out?!

I know it appears to be hairy in the pic, but in real life and if you click the pic to a larger size you will see it is more like a fungus growing on it, rather then hair sticking out. It seems to be a grouping of large (as in much larger then a deer, rabbit or even a raccoon) pellets that are more oval shaped.

The closest I could find to this scat in my trusty rusty lil' scat book was that it may be a groundhog... except everyone says it's rare to see groundhog scat because usually they poop inside a special place in the tunnels at their home. An underground groundhog bathroom.

So could this be a rare moment of a groundhog poopin' in the wild instead of at his hand built potty place?

So, Help! Who shat this scat?
XOxoxo

Do You Forage For Food?

...cause it's kinda exciting and fun. Not to mention probably some deep biological drive that feels super satisfying to fulfill. While I am working on having much of my own food growing at the Luck Cabin by planting dwarf fruit trees, having seasonal veggie gardens, planting a variety of culinary herbs, and learning about edible forest plants... I also am a food foraging scout for at least 2 miles around me.

Meaning, alot of the folks who live in these parts don't actually live here anymore. Farmers get old and die, the family holds onto the land but doesn't want to live there, or there are the once popular vacation homes that are for sale & abandoned now. These people just are not around, and with all the walks I take in the area I can't help but scope out every plant, fruit tree, nut tree and take a mental note of when it will be ready to drop a good meal.

Pictured above are a ton of small white peaches on the ground at a house no one has lived at for quite some time. I picked through them to find the best looking ones. I wanna make peach sauce! :)

Pictured below are HUGE delicious turnip greens I found in a field down the road, the cabin & property there is a vacation spot I have yet to see anyone stay at. The field is mostly overgrown.

There are some places where neighbors DO live, and have such an abundance of apples and chestnuts they are willing to share. :)

Another "food" I forage for is seeds. I find seeds to other herbs, plants, and wildflowers that I want to take back with me to my cabin. In my hand (pic below) is the seed head for the herb YARROW. I use yarrow alot during the summer in the natural bug repellent I make for my skin.

Usually while I am out on these walks I find tracks from native animals, and sometimes I find the real thing...

These are wild turkeys that were very close and within perfect range to get for dinner, but I don't have those kind of hunting skills yet. Or rather I only had a big knife on me at the time and not a gun, or a bow & arrow. But the potential to forage some good turkey meat is easily available...and for me personally one turkey would last me 6-8 months.

FOOD I GATHERED :::::::::

I got a pretty good variety of free foods to eat. Think about it.. it's FREE. Free food and free therapy because giving in to your inner hunter/gatherer just feels good, feels peaceful, and right.

And since these foods are wild, they are not only organic but they are even better then organic!

Chestnuts, apples, peaches, acorns, turnip greens (and wishfully a turkey, maybe next time)! And there is so much more to be had, this is just what I can fit in my backpack and carry on each trip. Had I bought all this at the health food store I would have spent a fuckin' TON of money, just organic apples alone woulda broke me.

But now i can have yummy peach and apple sauce, and enjoy the fruits & nuts of my scouting labors. :)

Xoxoxox

Animal Tracking: Black Bear Scat

One scoop of peach bear poop please! In a cup not a cone. ;)

Here is a blop of scat nobody coulda' missed while walking down the remote gravel road... it almost looked like one of those rubber joke poops, but upon a closer look I could see it had fruit skins in it (and not the usual joke corn).

Also it was very, very fresh and only the baking sun had darkened the very thin exterior.

The longer I sat there examining it, the more evidence that appeared - not just in the poop but on the wind. I smelled something strong and skunky... I tended to think it was a skunk, until my donkey's behavior began to change to something nervous and agressive, something frightened.

I broke the scat open to see it just fell apart, fresh, warm, and strong smelling. FULL of fruit...

10 feet away from the scat was a tall peach tree with tons of little half rotted peaches on the ground.

If I was a bear in the Fall season, I would stand guard near the last peaches of the year too. JuJu the donkey let me know under no uncertain terms that there was a bear in the area by looking up into the forested area over and over, alert, freaked out, and tried forcing me to run away with her by jumping, running back and forth, making huge eyes. When she realized i was not going to run she gave up on my stupid human self and she took off running alone! I found out where she was when i got a call from a neighbor that she was grazing their lawn.

Are humans less aware then they used to be... or are we that arrogent that we don't fear wild animals anymore, even unarmed? Why don't our instincts force us running, but instead thinking?

Xoxoxox

Animal Tracking: Bobcat & Wild Turkey

Can hardly see it huh? Neither could I. As I was walking I began to stare to my right at the smooth clay & silt where rain had drained down the side of a mountain road, I imagined how nice some tracks would look in that perfectly smooth mud...
then I saw it.
Bobcat tracks.
One after another in a staight line, wide apart and shaped with such perfection that it left no doubt as to what had left it. No claw marks, large pads, feline shape... (see track info & drawings HERE)....
A bobcat moving upward along the road, moving towards some turkey feathers and...

...wild turkey tracks (see pic below)! You can almost see the scene unfolding, like a dream of something to happen, already happened, to always happen. The hunt. The cat trailing the bird in hunger, in play and power.

Xoxoxo

Animal Tracking: Black Bear Scat?

While me and JuJu the donkey were on one of our walks I came upon this scat (poop) in the gravel road. I knew right away it was not raccoon scat, bird scat, or deer scat because of the shape...
it had some round berries in it and didn't look hairy so I felt perplexed as to whether it might be coyote scat either.
Fox? A bit of black bear poop? Opossum?
Following scat descriptions, I know that canine's have poop that gets pointy on the ends and bobcats have a tubular shape too - deer and rabbit poop comes out in pellets (rabbit's having a more dry, flat, & separated look, deer being a bigger wet pile of pellets), wild turkey scat looks like a big bird poop with the white mixed in. Raccoon's look like alot of lil' cylinder tubes of poop, and opossums are kinda like a coyote poop that has bumps strung together....
*
This left me with one choice... a choice I smelled about 50 feet down the road....
A Black BEAR!
Further down the way I smelled a strong odor, one that was like skunky urine. I immediately knew it was a bear, I assume from some deep biological part of my brain that carries primitive instincts cause I have not seen a bear urinate & then sniffed it after. It's something you just know when it blows into your nose. A bear smells like no other animal and it's generally skunky stinky dread locked dirty pungent aroma can't be missed.
*
Now I realize, the bear has been hanging all around my cabin, this poop with these berries in it are everywhere in the woods.
XOxoxo

Long Tailed "Kangaroo" Mouse (AKA Woodland Jumping Mouse)

The other night while I was relaxing on the phone, suddenly my cat jumped in my window holding a mouse. Nothing unusual... until she dropped the mouse right at my feet and I noticed what I first thought as some kid of deformity or rare defect - the mouse had a tail well over two times it's body length!!! It also had really large back feet and hopped across my floor as well as ran...

I was not sure if this was a certain type of mouse, or if some freak of the forest had dropped in tha' cabin, till a friend of mine googled it and found that the Nature Center in my area of the western north carolina mountains had written an excited page about these long tailed cutie pies...
"Although they live here in the mountains, you many only rarely get the chance to glimpse at one in the wild. One reason is that they do not 'breed like rats.' They only have two litters a year and have a one-acre average population on only three mice (about 1/5 of that of deer mice). Also, they are nocturnal and are one of the few mice that hibernate. Their habitat is the cool, moist spruce-fir and hemlock-hardwood forests of our mountain area. Even in you are prowling the mountain tops at night and stumble into prime jumping mouse territory, about all you would see is a orange or gold furry blur with a long tail trailing like a meteorite streaking across the forest floor. Jumping mice live up to their name by leaping as much as three feet in a single bound!"
*

I love them and their amazing tails!!!

Xoxoxox

Frogs IN the Luck Cabin

I don't think I told ya'll yet... but every time it rains, and sometimes when it's not raining frogs come hopping right under my door (or over the threshhold when it's open) straight into the Luck Cabin! I like it.

Xoxox

I Found A Turtle In The Road...

....and jammed on the brakes of my Jimmy GMC to pick it up. I jumped out the truck and ran backwards to the turtle, grabbed it, then ran back to my truck and put it in a box to bring back to my pond at the Luck Cabin. Safe and far away from any busy roads!

I hadn't seen any box turtles at my pond yet (only two snapping turtles just this week) - and had been wishing for some turtles to come hang around. :)

I waited behind some tall ferns for Lil' Boxy to pop out it's head and check out the cool place it now could live.... I sensed a look of approval and appraisal.

A whole pond to itself to start a family! Yay!

XOXoxox

The Bat

This little bat fell down from the eaves of my cabin onto a ladder.... seeing a bat during the day is really neat because I could get a good look at how awesome, fuzzy, and sweet it was.

One thing I noticed, that also happens with large moths (like the Lunar Moth) is right before the bat prepares to fly it begins shaking or vibrating for at least 30 seconds or more then takes off into the air. This usually makes me think it's really stressed out and having a panic attack - but I think it may have some biological purpose in preparation for it's escape flight.

Look how fuzzy wuzzy. I almost touched it just to see... but it flew underneath my cabin to hide again and get a good day's rest before a nightly feast. I hope the bat eats up all the stupid mosquitoes coming out in the summer heat, cause they keep trying to eat me. :)

xoxox

Animal Tracking: The Appalachian Mountain Lion

That is one BIG padded paw! About the size of a large canine, but without the tell tale claw marks dogs leave behind (a distinct hole over each pad even in shallow dirt because dog, fox and coyote claws are not retractable.) A track without the claw holes is a feline track, and because these tracks were deep in the mud and there were at least several to look at all without canine claw mark --- I believe these are tracks made by the rarely seen, elusive, almost extinct and hotly debated Native Mountain Lion!

Some other signs that a mountain lion passed through by my cabin are during that week these tracks appeared my cat (a domestic cat named Toots) was terrified to go outside at night (and during the day) - I found more tracks down by my garden, all following along the path of the creek downward on the mountain. Also in this area where the tracks were, the deer tracks that normally were all over there disappeared for a time.

People in the appalachian mountains have argued for quite some time whether the Mountain Lion of the area was completely extinct now or whether a few remained well hidden - I have heard stories from a handful of reliable people who have seen the western north carolina mountain lion ( chasing a wolf in the snow in Brevard, through binolculars during a deer hunt in Hot Springs, gracefully hopping a fence at the top of a ridge in Marshall, sitting outside a chicken farm's large coop in Marshall...) --->

As for myself, aside from seeing these amazing tracks pictured here - 5 years ago in Weaverville, NC far back in the woods off Reems Creek Rd. around 3 a.m. I heard the scream of the mountain lion on top the ridge behind the little house I was staying - exactly as people describe it sounded like a woman screaming a blood curdling scream but was unmistakably an animal. It was chill inducing, and made it so I could not fall back to sleep- I knew exactly what it was when I heard it.

Another interesting twist on these tracks, was this was the same place I found what I thought were bobcat tracks... although those were washed away with the rain, a new set of bobcat sized tracks were only 7-10 feet away from these large feline tracks - possibly it could be a cub of the mountain lion and not a bobcat? That would be awesome. :)

What do you think? The "Painter" as the old timers called it was a feared animal, and between people shooting them on sight out of fear and the wiping out of deer at one point led to this now mysterious status for the native puma...

Do you believe they are still here?

After seeing these tracks behind my cabin, I do.

XOXOxox RRrrroar!