Better late than never?

As usual, Wile E. Coyote showed up a little late and looking a little worse for wear. My wife came home from work yesterday and saw this guy taking a snooze in the grass directly across the street from our house. The only reason it got up was because our neighbor had just walked out into the driveway and gotten in his car.

I was able to get a couple of pictures taken before this one went around the vegetation to the right in the picture and disappeared. When I went over to investigate, it either had found a spot in the vegetation to resume its nap, or had scaled the fence of the house and was now walking through the back yard of that house.

Either way, it is always important to be on the look out for wildlife, either on the trail or in urban environments. My son has informed me that he's seen the roadrunner several times on his way to and from school for cross country practice. As noted in my last post, we see coyotes all the time, but usually near dusk or dawn and they are usually fairly skittish and people wary. This one wasn't.

I've been hiking in the foothills north of our house and seen coyotes several times. One time I had been out geocaching with friends in San Dimas Canyon, located to the west of our house.  We had been looking for a nicely put together geocache entitled Curiouser and Curiouser, themed after Alice in Wonderland.  After finding the cache, we stood at the gate leading which closed the fire road to regular car traffic and I spotted a coyote walking toward us about 500 feet or so up the road.

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I was thinking to myself that something didn't look right at all with that coyote.  I even mentioned it out loud.  At about the same time, the "coyote" made a left hand turn into the brush by the side of the trail and it was at that time that we realized that we'd been looking at a mountain lion walking toward us.  In the dwindling twilight, we decided to take our leave from the area.

Be careful out there.