Wellsboro Bike Rides=Wildlife Adventure

A couple of weeks ago we trekked up to Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, to spend some time on their rails to trails, but we weren't ready for everything we saw while we were there.

On our first day on the bike trail while we were riding along we saw a large animal on the trail ahead of us. When I exclaimed, "It's a cat!" it looked up and saw us and headed off into the woods. It was a cat alright. A bobcat. Bobcats don't like to show themselves often, so that was a real treat. It didn't stick around long enough for either of us to get a photo, but here's a shot of what one might look like up close and personal.

Also on the trail that day were several snakes. The first one we saw we stopped to help him off the trail. Where we normally ride we don't see too many snakes on the trail itself, and we'd rather they not get themselves run over. But then we saw another one. And another. And another. It was like they were everywhere. Mostly they were non-poisonous water snakes, but we did see a couple of garter snakes, too. This was one of the water stakes, and he let me take his picture. Well, sort of. I don't think he was very happy about it.

 

The second day we were there was a bit rainy, so we walked the town and read the day away. During our walk, I snapped this photo of a deer making itself at home in somebody's yard. It didn't seem very surprised at all to see us and wasn't frightened by us being there in the least.

The third day turned out to be spectactular, so we hit the bike trail again. As we rode past some houses, along the top of the fence separating the trail from the yard ran a black squirrel. He ran right along with our riding speed and was about three feet away from me. At first I didn't recognize what it was because I didn't realize that black squirrels even existed. But they do, and we got to see one close up. Unfortunately, by the time I realized what it was, it was too late to pull out the camera.

Did you see the first photo at the top of this post? Shortly after I took it (and put my camera away, of course. This is starting to sound like I'm making this up, isn't it.), we caught sight of a large black animal on the trail ahead of us. At first I thought it was a really big dog, but then it stood on its hind legs and proceeded to climb over the fence on the right of the photo. Yep. A bear.

We saw so many more snakes on the trail that we just decided to do our best not to hit them with our bikes. Snakes themselves are pretty exciting to see on a normal bike trip, but after you've seen a bobcat and a bear, any snakes you might see seem kind of tame.

Scary mushrooms that pop up overnight

When I came back from an early morning run, I found these three little guys growing rampant in our front yard.

They weren't growing there the day before. It might be hard to see in the photo, but the largest one measured 7" tall (the next largest one was 6"). I think they were deposited here by aliens. They'll take over soon enough.

Uh, yeah that's a snake

So I grew up in the country surrounded by woods, and we had snakes. I never really got used to that. I live a little less in the country now, in a spot that is being surrounded by development. Little by little, the natural habitat of the animals that live around us is being taken away.

We've always allowed our property to grow as wild as possible, first for privacy and second for wildlife. We've encountered opposum, ground hogs, raccoon, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, a weasel, (possibly) a black bear and many, many species of birds. But until this summer we had never seen a snake.

I guess it was only a matter of time.

I didn't see or get a shot of the bigger garter snake we had had on our property earlier this summer, but I'm thinking that one might have been a mom. The one I did see and get shots of was just a little guy, sunning himself on the concrete around our outdoor building. He let me take the close-up above which makes him look bigger than he really was. The photo below gives a better comparison. He was only about as big around as a pencil.

And, as was tradition when I was growing up, his name is Charlie.

Bear scat?

I'm thinking this wasn't the neighbor's cat.

We found two similar piles within a few yards of each other in our front yard. The second one was close to a line of empty (except for the leftover dirt) potted plant containers which were lined up along a wall of our small outdoor building. A couple of the containers had been tipped over, and one was broken in half.

I know, I know, this probably isn't what you typically expect to see on a blog, but we weren't sure what neighbor left this for us. We've done some research, and we're thinking black bear. We checked around the property and didn't find any kind of territory markings on the trees, but we've found bark scraped off before. We're thinking he was looking for grubs behind the pots.

The bright circle toward the bottom center is a quarter I put in for size comparison. I think the droppings are pretty impressive, no matter what left them.

And now that I think about it, I haven't seen the neighbor's cat around lately.