This didn’t happen in nature, but it was so amazing. We took our then 2-year old son to the Toronto zoo (a fabulous zoo) and we were indoors looking at the gorillas. There was a window, and one gorilla was sitting near it with his back to us and Aaron was standing on the other side, right up to the glass. The gorilla turned around and saw him, and stood up and put his hands on the glass, right where Aaron’s were on the other side and put his face close and looked at him for a couple of minutes. They were face to face, hand to hand. It was incredible.
A couple of my most memorable are a few years old.
Dad would take us to Jasper a lot when I was younger. Do a day trip, hang out in the hot springs have a picnic lunch and a hike and back home. Well this one time we were having lunch and everyone had scattered for various reasons (bathroom, dumping garbage in the bin, to look at the view from the picnic area below the hot springs, that sort of thing). If you’re familiar with the area you know that there is almost always mountain goats in the parking lot and picnic area.
So I was sitting there finishing up my lunch and guarding our things. I had my back to the table and next thing I hear is my Dad yelling at me to turn around while running back to the table so I turn around and… across the picnic table from me is a mountain goat, making a move for the potato salad on a plate.
I look at him, he looks at me, and then he just wanders off like he wasn’t doing anything at all.
Then when we lived near Fish Creek, one winter I was on the bus heading home and I was almost at my stop but not quite paying attention. We were sitting for such a long time at the corner that I finally look up… and see about a half dozen deer crossing the road.
There’s been many times seeing deer or bears or mountain goats… When I was younger Dad would take us to the mountains a lot. I was always amazed at the people who’d get out of the car and try to pet them or get pictures taken.
I always loved staying at my aunt’s because she lives in the park, so you could sit in her living room and watch the elk walking by as if they owned the town.
The resort we go to in the Poconos has a good amount of wildlife that will let you get quite close. Fer’instance, there’s the five-pic set that begins here (“next” is to the lower right of the pic), and I always make it a point to say hello to Sadie.
Yesterday morning I was sitting on my back porch, enjoying the view, when I heard a splash…about 15 seconds later, a bald eagle carrying a fish flew past! Damn, but I love the swamp!
A few years ago I was stationed at Mountain Home AFB in Idaho. I was working on a remote part of the base and saw nature at it’s finest. There were three whistlepigs (groundhogs that whistle when in danger) whistling to each other. I assumed that they though I was the danger until I spied a brown and gray ball of hissing fury attack the nearest of the three. The badger (that’s the ball of fury) batted the whistlepig around for about 20 yards and the carried him into a den to eat. From then on, when having a bad day I went out for a break looking for the badger. Navere saw him again, though.
I used to live out in the desert to the east of San Diego, in a tiny town in the middle of the Anza Borrego state park. Driving from there to my parents in Escondido was some of the best wildlife viewing I’ve ever had, but it sure did take a while for me to get used to it.
One twilight as I drove through a section of rolling valleys and rocky mountains, I saw a flock of…something running across a field about 300 yards ahead. I had just watched Jurassic Park 3, and the motion of these critters was identical to the main villain. Except they were much smaller. Part of my brain screamed “AH! Miniature velociraptors!”
Turns out it was a flock of about 20 wild turkeys.
On an earlier occasion, my mom and I saw a wildcat and her kit climbing a rock face just next to the road. On a trip through Colorado, we stopped near Vail for gas and saw a whole herd of mountain goats hanging out, about thirty yards above us.
Probably the most dramatic was one December, just before Christmas, when my brothers and I were all at my parents’. My mom asked me to move the couch to open up the place where she was going to put the Christmas tree. I did, saw what was under the couch, yelled “WHOA!” at the top of the lungs, and nearly climbed on top of my dad.
I didn’t get a really good look at it, but it was orange-ish, reptillian, thick, limbed, and about a yard long from tip of snout to end of tail. My older brother calmly stepped in, picked it up and carried it out into the backyard. Might have been a Gila monster, I guess. It must have been really cold to come inside for a chance to warm up.
I saw some once in the 'burbs (although near a state park) – it was late October, so my brain processed them as really short kids in black capes scurrying across the street, trick or treating.
This morning, I was walking my Lhasa Apso (who has eaten only one repairman this month ), and we found something strange. On the schoolhouse lawn, right next to a classroom, there was a neatly built bird nest, just big enough to hold a baseball. It had two rocks in it. One was an egg-like river rock, but the other was more obviously a rock.
This thread is making me so homesick I could cry. It’s been over a year since I was home, and thus over a year since I’ve seen a waxwing (cedar or bohemian), loon, wild turkey, golden or bald Eagle, white tail or mule deer, elk, fox, moose, coyote, owl, coon, skunk, flicker, woodpecker, yellow finch, bluebird, meadowlark, black bear or even a stupid freaking robin, all of which used to be common sights merely looking out my dining room window.
Not to mention the wolverines, lynx & wild wolves, which I had to actually leave the house to see.
My wife and I lived on a compound in Saudi Arabia. She was Thai and an enthusiastic gardener so we had a jungle in the back yard, bananas, papayas, spices, ordinary bushes, and a lot of other things, mostly edible. A common pet in Saudi is a desert turtle, Bedouin women sell them at the local market and a lot of expats on the compound had them. Unfortunately, a lot of people leave the country and abandon their turtles to roam the compound and eat the gardens. The landscape people on the compound discovered that my wife would accept the turtles and take care of them so they started dropping them off at the house whenever they found one. We wound up with 14 of them at one point.
My wife would go out and stomp her feet on the ground a few times and the turtles learned that she would feed them sliced cucumbers if they would come out of the bushes. After that, whenever you walked into the garden, a herd of turtles would charge out of the bushes and stand around your feet waiting for their cukes.
The other odd thing they did was mating. Not that mating is odd, I just never suspected turtles of having such an insatiable sex drive. The male sneaks up on the female and butts her shell a couple of times as a hint and if she’s willing she’ll stand still and let the male do his thing. If she keeps on walking he’ll scurry along behind her and clack her another time or two. The males are persistent!
Sitting in the garden was like attending a testudian orgy, with surprisingly loud clacks coming from all the bushes around you.
), and we found something strange. On the schoolhouse lawn, right next to a classroom, there was a neatly built bird nest, just big enough to hold a baseball. It had two rocks in it. One was an egg-like river rock, but the other was more obviously a rock. 
