The Animals

The moose remains elusive, but I saw this guy the other day between the Wintturi shelter and Cloudland Road in Vermont:














[Porcupine in the woods, Aug. 5, 2009. It climbed five feet up a tree, watched me for a while, came down and ambled in the opposite direction.]

I was close to a moose on Tuesday. Very close:














[Moose print, Aug. 4, before the Stony Brook shelter.]

My animal sightings so far:

- spiky woods dog: 1
- moose: 0
- deer: a few
- silent night deer: 2, in Massachusetts
- bears: 2, in New Jersey
- snakes: about 10; 6 regular, 4 poisonous
- eerie black vultures: 1, which perched in a branch overhead and watched me while I climbed around some rocks in New York














- grouse: too many. These game birds tend to explode noisily out of the bushes around you as you walk past them and fly horizontally away from you.
- squiggly gecko things: quite a few. These orange reptiles wriggle hopelessly on their bellies. They wriggle so much that they are impossible to bring into focus with a camera:














- chipmunks: still infinite :)