Overlooking Pine Knob

Mountain Aid 2009 - Shakori Hills, North Carolina

I was a little curious about this deer because he/she wasn’t getting real excited about me being there. I couldn’t tell if this was a doe or a buck because it appears to be a yearling born sometime last year. When I first saw the yearling I wondered about what I thought was it’s winter coat. But I believe it is instead shedding the spotted coat.

The next two photos I’m really disappointed with because of the auto focus thing but they do look kinda cool. The camera focused on the branch in front of the deer.

After following this deer up onto another nearby road, one question was answered but a few more unanswerable questions created. I knew why the yearling wasn’t in a hurry, there was a friend nearby.

The yearling’s friend/father is right now growing in four points so he will be at least a six point by the time his antlers finish growing. The questions created by this scene is, knowing the little deer is a yearling, where is its mother? Is the six point the yearling’s father? If so, I think it is very cool this young buck would look after the yearling. I’m pretty sure that is normally the job of the doe. For some reason I felt proud of that buck… you go boy, doin’ the right thing.

To me, although this is a peaceful scene with the deer grazing and such, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss and a little sad. I wished them the best and left them at their grazing.

I have a story to tell about this catfish.

Back in the winter my neighbor was cleaning up one of her recently vacated rental properties when she came across this catfish. The previous tenants had apparently decided the fish wasn’t worth taking so in an unheated rental unit, it was left to fend for itself in about 3 inches of ice cold water in the bottom of a plastic bowl.

Maybe it’s just me, but I just couldn’t leave it. I adopted the catfish and brought him and a tank that was sitting inside the unit home. The fish was very sluggish and no doubt in shock from the 3 to 4 days in unoxygenated and ice cold water.

It took a couple of days but he finally started eating and coming back around. Now he is as healthy as a horse and actually, for the most part, quite boring. I say for the most part because this story doesn’t end here.

A couple of months after bringing the catfish home another neighbor suggested I get him some company. When I said quite boring that is because he is usually camped right here in this little cave. I thought to myself maybe he would like to have some company. Let me tell you, he liked company alright.

The neighbor has a fishtank overrun with guppies. So to thin the population in her tank and to increase the population in mine, she gave me some of her fish. There were two male guppies, one female, and 4 or 5 baby guppies.

This catfish had a field day with those guppies, apparently at night. I watched them pretty close for the first day or so and then the morning of the second day - the catfish was the sole survivor. There was not a guppy to be found in the tank. None floating or in the filter, he had eaten every one of them.

Needless to say, I have since taken a new appreciation for this catfish. He is not as harmless as he appears. I have not fed him any companionship since.