Wildlife in suburbia

Suburbia?

Suburbia .... I gather that it's considered much cooler to live in an urban environment, where you can walk to coffee shops and food carts, ride your bike to work, and all that. Meanwhile, suburbia is the land of SUVs and 2.5 kids.

But apart from the livability advantages that suburbs can offer for families with kids (yards, parking, generally strong public elementary schools), they are also aesthetically pleasing in the Pacific Northwest.

This is especially true where I live. The development touched as little of the native trees and environment as possible, so it looks nothing like the hideous display in the nearby picture. I basically live on the edge of a natural forest. And it's a forest that teems with wildlife, and wildlife being wild, we get visits from North American critters - sometimes even in our backyard!

For all I know, we have snakes in our grass, but they wouldn't be easy to spot. I do see them occasionally when I go running, though.

Enjoying the sunshine

So hot even the snake had to shed its skin

I've also seen a coyote on a run, but when I followed it a bit to try to take a closer picture, it scurried away into the forest, so I can't show you what it looked like. But we see them once in a while. Another time, a coyote scampered across our backyard. My wife was mildly concerned, my dad thought it looked beautiful, and I thought it was immensely cool that we had a coyote in our backyard.

Raccoons, too. This one popped out at night:

"You looking at me?"

Deer, of course, are quite common in North American forests. Like coyotes, they seem quite adaptable to human civilization.

Seen while running

I came across the two little guys (girls?) in the picture below earlier this afternoon. I pulled into the driveway and thought I saw a dog in our sideyard. When I got out to examine, I saw that there were two deer calves, smaller than a full grown retriever. They ran behind the bush to hide from me. I managed to get this picture with a full zoom on my smartphone a full moments later.

"Where's Mommy?"

Despite my backing away and leaving them plenty of room, they wouldn't leave that corner. So I went inside and was prepared to open the gate from the backyard, because I know that deer sometimes cross from our backyard to other yards. When I opened the back door, I saw why the calves were hanging around:

"Come here, babies!"

I am still not sure how Mommy Deer ended up in our backyard separated from her calves. The wooden fence is 6 feet high, so I don't think the calves could jump it, but I'm not an expert. Anyway, I wanted to open the gate so the family could be reunited, but I didn't want to get charged by the mom, and I was worried about scaring the calves ... or being bitten by them. After consulting with my neighbor, I slowly approached the gate from the front side, carefully watching the calves to make sure they stayed behind the bush of safety. I pushed the gate wide open and backed away cautiously. When I was far away, one calf tentatively went through the opening, and then the other.

To be clear, I'm not knocking the urban lifestyle. It has its appeal, and I'm sure there are people who love it. But suburbia has its benefits too, including - at least in my situation - a good dose of wildlife.

San Diego running

Boy, there sure are a lot of runners in San Diego! I just got back from a few days down there, and it seemed like there were runners in the morning, mid-day, early evening, and even night time.

We arrived on Sunday and were staying right near Balboa Park, near the Hillcrest Area. The place we were staying at had a small gym on the top floor, with reasonable hours (closing time at 10 p.m.). However, due to the need to do some grocery shopping so that we'd have breakfast the next morning, I wasn't free to go running that night until 9:40 or so. I asked the front desk how stringent they were about the hours, and the clerk said they locked down the elevator at 10 p.m. (I discovered later that you can take the stairs there, and I don't think they were all that strict. Oh well.)

This is, of course, San Diego, which has about the best weather imaginable in the continental United States, so I headed outdoors. I think much of San Diego is pretty safe, but when you aren't familiar with a location, nighttime can often bring a sense of unease. I headed over toward the part of Hillcrest that was still happening at night - restaurants, night clubs, and strip clubs. I got in a decent 4 miles at an easy pace before calling it a night.

Me, on the deck of an aircraft carrier

I should have gotten up early the next day (Monday) to go running, but hey, I was on vacation, so I slept in. During the day, we toured the U.S.S. Midway museum. I've been on a decommissioned battleship before (the U.S.S. Missouri), but never an aircraft carrier, so this was a pretty neat experience. I did find myself wondering, "if the seas were calm, did any sailors go running laps on the flattop deck?" Of course, when the ship was on active duty, there were no fences along the edges, so perhaps lap running was not recommended.

We weren't staying near the San Diego harbor, which was too bad, because it looked like it was an awesome place to go running. In the picture below, you can see the Midway to the right, the parking lot for the Fish Market to the left, and in the center (in the distance), the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan.

San Diego Harbor at sunset (photo by me)

That night, I headed up to the gym and ran 9 miles on the treadmill before the gym closed. Rather, I stopped when I thought the gym would close, but I think I could've stayed longer. Anyway, why didn't I run outside? Mostly because I wanted to watch some "24" .... (darn TV addiction)

We went to the San Diego Zoo the next day. As I mentioned, we were staying near Balboa Park, but the zoo entrance was way on the other side of the park, and some of the extended family members would've had trouble walking there and back, so we drove.

Ah, the life of a panda bear....

Do lions mind being in a cage, if they're fed constantly?

I seem to be obsessed about running, because I was thinking that the zoo would be a great place for a 5K race. A bit hilly, to be sure, but with wide walkways. Then my wife pointed out that it would be incredibly disruptive to the animals ....

According to the pedometer app on my smartphone, we had walked about 4 miles at the zoo. That was a pretty good warm-up, but it certainly didn't satisfy my running addiction. With some free time available to me in the late afternoon, I went running through Balboa Park, including back to the zoo! One of the main attractions to the route was going across the Cabrillo Bridge - grassy park on one side, and lots of museums on the other side:

The Cabrillo Bridge connecting the two sides of Balboa Park

This too ended up being a relatively short run, just 4 miles, because of the need to have enough time to clean up before dinner.

It was appealing enough that the next morning, I ran through the park again. Now, it turns out that the primary landing path for airplanes headed to the San Diego airport goes right over the southwestern edge of Balboa Park. I happened to be in that part of the park when a jet roared overhead on its descent. I should've taken a picture!

I got in 5 miles at a cruising pace by circumscribing the park, and topped off the trip with a short workout in the gym that night (the last one).

Ah, San Diego. Neither Los Angeles nor San Francisco/Berkeley hold much appeal to me these days, but San Diego still does; if only California weren't so expensive....

Yikes, killer dogs!

This is not a comforting story . . . a runner in Detroit got mauled to death by a pair of dogs. A fortysomething man, just like me(!). From the news story:

The dogs were apparently running free on the road where the attack took place. Neighbors fired shots into the air to try to scare the dogs off the jogger.

Afterward, the dogs retreated to their owner's home.

It certainly makes my coyote chasing not such a great idea, it seems. I did get kind of attacked by a dog once while running. The dog's owner had him on a leash, fortunately, but when I ran past them going uphill, the dog lunged at me with a paw before the owner could pull him away. It didn't rip my tech shirt or otherwise break my skin, but it did leave a long and not insignificant scratch on my chest.

Now I try to give dogs wide clearance.

Yellowstone running (and Grand Teton too)

North Entrance to Yellowstone National Park

I just got back from a week in Wyoming, first at Grand Teton National Park for a couple of days, and the next five at Yellowstone National Park. As this was a family vacation (including my dad), I didn't get to do nearly as much running as I normally would've. But I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to get in some miles in national parks!