National Geographic

Or maybe it was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (I am sure some of my younger readers have no idea what that is). Anyway, we had some wild animal experiences while we were in Wyoming this past weekend. The first thing we noticed was that there are a LOT of deer living with our friends, Larry and Vicki (well, not really with them, but sharing the same plot of land, so to speak). At first we were all excited about seeing the many deer, but by the end of the weekend we would only get excited about the fawns and bucks.

In addition to the deer, there are a lot of cattle living in Wyoming! The verse that kept going through my mind this weekend was Psalm 50:10 "For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills." I think I saw cattle on a thousand hills in Wyoming and to think the Lord knows them all and owns them all - amazing. I think the many deer belong to him too :)

Anyway, cattle are not that exciting, so let's continue our little biology class...On Saturday we decided to go to Devil's Tower(notice the cattle in the foreground). This is a VERY cool geological site, but we're not doing geology class right now, so I won't go into it.   Maybe another day...Anyway, we decided to hike around the base of the tower (on a nice paved trail - 1.3 miles). The first .65 miles was rather uneventful and the only wildlife we saw was what we brought with us
Notice how nicely the kids are sitting and how weird I am. The last half of the circle was really VERY cool.  First, we saw a baby fawn, laying by a downed tree about five feet from the path.  No doubt it's mama had given it instructions to lay still and so it was doing just that, even with about a dozen people gawking at it.  It was very cool.That was cool, but nothing compared to what we saw next...

Now for a brief intermission...not totally off topic as you will soon discover...for Mother's Day, Evan bought me a game called Killer BunniesI wanted it because the name was so funny to me.

Back to our regularly scheduled program...

Well, a few more yards down the path, I spotted the strangest thing happening in the woods. First, I saw a rabbit, that's not so odd, but then I saw the snake (there are lots of rattlesnakes up there), now that's a little odder. At first I thought, "Oh, poor bunny is being attacked by this rattle snake!" as the two tussled in the woods. It soon became apparent the I should have been thinking, "Oh, poor snake is being attacked by this killer bunny!" because that is what was happening. The two would tussle, complete with snake flopping up in the air and bunny hopping madly around, and then the snake would slither away a few yards, bunny would follow and jump on the snake again, I kid you not!. Finally the snake sought refuge in a tree and bunny hung out for a bit then started towards us. I was actually ready to run if that bunny came any closer. Have you ever heard of anything so odd? Because this bunny is now my hero, I will post a picture of her (I'm sure it was a her - teehee)


She doesn't look much like the bunny on my game, but the gleaming eye is a nice touch!  I guess the snake deserves a spot on the blog too, since he was the one suffering in all of this.  He's there in the middle of the photo.  No one wanted to get close enough to confirm if it was indeed a rattler or not.

Well, after all that excitement, we had to go home and rest a bit!