Wildlife

I guess animals love this time of year too.

Friday afternoon I went for a bike ride down the Accotink trail.  On my way back, I was coming around a slow bend and saw a dog running down the trail.  I figured once I got around the bend I'd see who it was running with.  Once I came around though I realized that it was on its own.  It was running at a quick trot, in a straight line, on the right side of the path as it should be, all in all seeming very well behaved.  I started to wonder if I should stop and try to grab it.  Since I was on my bike even if I grabbed it I couldn't do much with it, but if someone was running after it I might slow it down enough to let them catch up.  It was a medium-large dog, but I thought if I saw a collar it might be worth seeing how it reacted to me as I got closer. 

Pretty soon I got close enough that it noticed me though, and it kind of jumped to turn and look at me.  That's when I realized that this was not a lost dog, but a fox.  At this point it quickly bounded off into the woods.  It was the biggest fox I had ever seen.  Generally I think of foxes being a little bigger than a large cat, but distinctly smaller than a medium sized dog.  I think of them hunting bunnies and squirrels.  While this guy might have had trouble with a full grown buck, it probably could have taken down most smaller deer.

On Tuesday I was riding up the W&OD when a deer walked onto the path a good long ways in front of me.  It stopped, pretty much stradling/blocking the entire path.  As I got close I was slowing down and shouting at it hoping it would move, but it didn't budge.  As I got real close it slowly turned and started to go back the way it came such that I was able to get by, but it really didn't seem bothered by me in the slightest.

Then Wednesday I biked a different section of the W&OD, and what I'm pretty sure was a beaver scurried onto the path a few hundred feet ahead of me.  It hung out on the path for about 10 seconds and then scurried off on the other side. 

I'm starting to wonder what I'm going to come across next.  Deer are common but never that brazen, there are fox (foxes?) around but not that many and never that large, and I don't think I've ever seen a beaver around here.