The Sounds of Autumn Wildlife

You would think that living out here in the mountains it would be peaceful and quiet. But lately, the wildlife have been whooping up enough noise to make it downright hard to sleep.

First it was a bear. In fall, they are in a state called hyperphasia, which basically means they're gorging on every bit of food they can find to build up fat for hibernation. We have had a smallish cinnamon-colored black bear hanging around the neighborhood all summer. Tom and I saw its tracks in several places on our ramblings, and several neighbors have spotted it near their homes, but it has never come near our house. Well, one moonless night after Tom had gone back to Richland, I heard something bumping around out in the yard in the middle of the night. I got up and looked out the window, didn't see anything, and decided it must be the wind. That motivated me to go downstairs and make sure the door was latched properly, since it often blows open if it is not. I grabbed a flashlight and went down the stairs. Just as I got to the bottom of the stairs, I heard something knocking around a metal garbage can right next to the house. Now, I never keep garbage in my garbage cans because I don't want to attract bears. But I have several cans around which I use for storage. I pointed the flashlight out the window and still didn't see anything. I turned off the flashlight and walked over to the window. Just then I heard something messing with a plastic garbage can. I turned on the light and saw the back end of a bear moving away from the house. I grabbed a couple of pots and pans and went out on the back porch and banged and clattered for all I was worth, until I saw a vague dark shape sauntering nonchalantly down the hill. The next morning, I found the metal garbage can that I use to store fireplace ashes in knocked over the rocks and down the hill. Ashes, ashes we all fall down. There was ash everywhere. The plastic garbage can that I store kindling in had a couple of large puncture wounds where the bear had bitten the lid (in frustration, I guess). And as I walked around the yard, I found that the old composting toilet, which I had stored behind the old outhouse until I figure out what to do with it, had been taken apart, but not damaged. As always when a bear visits my yard, the large plastic lids of the septic tank access ports were pried off and were lying in the yard. Apparently the smell of human waste seems promising to hungry bears, but there was nothing to actually eat in the composting toilet and the water level in the septic tank is way too low to reach. Ick. Good thing, I would say. I like bears, and would leave it alone if it were out in the woods somewhere, but I don't want it to think my house is a good place to prowl around. Not finding anything to eat, and having an annoying human making all that racket will, I hope, discourage it from coming back.

Then it was something smaller that I have not identified yet. Every night for about a week, sometime in the middle of the night I would be woken up by something landing on the roof Whoomp! (presumably from a large tree that grows nearby) and then running laps back and forth across the roof about five or six times, and then going away. Ba-doop, ba-doop, ba-doop. Ba-doop, ba-doop, ba-doop. The sound really resonates on our metal roof. Small raccoon? Large squirrel? Flying packrat? Who knows. Whatever it is, it seems to be wearing army boots.

Then, of course there were chipmunks. Mating season is here again, and they seem to think that my front deck is Club Med. One evening, I saw one sitting on the edge of the deck, staring off into space, chirping periodically - about once a second - with its bushy tail jerking back and forth, keeping time with the chirps. I wondered what it was doing. Just before I headed up the stairs to bed, I looked and it was still there, still chirping. Suddenly, another chipmunk jumped up on the deck and pretended to ignore it while going about her business, picking up seeds and bits of charcoal that were scattered around the deck by the wind. The first chipmunk ceased his rhythmic chirping and started chasing the new arrival around, mounting her every time she paused for a second. It was the same chipmunk follies as last year. That front deck should be X rated.

And then the elk rut began. Every morning, every evening and even an occasional afternoon, there are bull elk bugling around in the woods. One day, there was one right below the house in the woods between the road and a meadow, bugling for all he was worth. I grabbed the camera and waited and waited. I could see something brown moving around in there, but I was hoping he would move out into the meadow so I could take his picture. No luck. He wandered away down the valley, staying in cover all the time. Probably a good strategy since hunting season is about here. Another evening, an owl hooting from the forest provided counterpoint for a number of elk bugling from different directions - quite a jazz symphony. One morning there were elk tracks all over the driveway, around my truck and the snowmobile.

If you have never heard the bugle of an elk, let me tell you it is the strangest sound you can imagine a big animal like that making. It sounds like ghosts trying to whistle, often followed by a sort of coughing grunt or two. It is beautiful and eerie. I eat my breakfast and my dinner out on the deck, listening to the bugles as the light changes on the mountains. It is a sublime, ethereal sound. Two evenings ago, there was an elk bugling on the ridge straight across the valley. He sounded like he was moving back and forth across the slope, or it might have been two elk bugling. Then I heard him make a deep, grunting sound, a short bugle and a bunch of grunting coughs. The next sound was something like large branches knocking against trees. Then there was silence, then more grunting, then another bugle, then more knocking. I heard a few cow elk do their little chirping sound, then silence again. Finally, there were a number of long, intense bugles. I don't know for sure what happened, but I think I heard two bulls having a sparring match. They put their heads together, and use those huge antlers of theirs for leverage, and sort of head-wrestle each other. I think that's what the knocking sound was. But, since I couldn't see them, it is just a guess.

Finally, last night it was cattle. You may not think of cows as wildlife, but around here they like to act as if they are. They wander all through the woods and look for new meadows to trample and chomp. The guy that runs his cattle on the ranch at the bottom of the valley is quite proud of how well his cows fatten up on other people's grass. He just lets them run all over the neighborhood, then sends a couple of cowboys on four-wheelers looking for them when it is time to send them to the feedlot. In Montana, people who own cows aren't required to fence them in. If you don't want them in your yard, it is your responsibility to fence them out. Cowboy rules for a state that probably has more cows than people. Anyway, I think it was only two or three cows, but I heard them mooing away right outside my window very early this morning. By the time I got up and went out there, they were gone, but there was a large cow pie right next to the bathhouse, and there were some well-trimmed grasses right by the truck. And the elk tracks from the other night are now all trampled by bovine prints.

Wildlife sightings? Not really. But I know they're out there. I can hear them.