One of my best friends, James, has noticed some very bizarre behavior by herds of elk and deer, packs of coyotes, and mountain lions. He recently returned from a one-night camping trip, where he noticed fresh mountain lion, coyote and elk tracks right through the middle of his campsite the next morning! He notes, “Pack of coyotes and elk do not move through campsites, especially if there are people there! Coyotes will only come through after everyone's gone; elk will flee from any scent of humans, and will avoid the area completely even after.”
“What is spooking our wildlife and making them act completely out-of-character?”
Logic dictates that elk are not prone to follow after predators, but rather will run in the opposite direction for miles, until the danger is far behind them. What's making these disparate species all flee in the same direction within only a few short minutes or hours of each other? And that in the middle of a very nasty, night-long storm that included huge wind gusts, an over-abundance of lightning, rain and snow with near-freezing temperatures until noon the next day—two days before the Summer Solstice! Other friends have noted other odd behavior while camping, when a bear remained near the camp in spite of warning gun-shots and a barking dog—in the face of such obstacles, a bear will flee the scene and disappear into the wilderness.. What they saw is not normal behavior for bears!
One of James' passions is hunting for deer and elk “sheds,” or horns and antlers. I went with him to search for some about a month ago, and discovered some very strange things, including a pronghorn antelope skull where antelope are almost never found in that part of the state. We found two other skulls that day, but there were not at all fresh. There were no sheds to be found, which confused James since they would have normally shed at least a month or two before we got there. Now, get this: people are only just now finding these sheds, some with nearly-fresh blood still on them! The herds of elk and deer should have lost their horns months ago!
"Why are they only just dropping now?? What has happened to our wildlife's natural 'clock'?"
Another of James' passions is collecting edible mushrooms. In his experience, some species would be “sporing” by now, ready to pick and eat. During this hike, however, he found no fresh samples, even after a whole night of precipitation, which is when mushrooms really blossom.
“What is happening to our local ecosystem?”
Animals have an innate sense of impending disaster and when they start acting strange, we would do well to listen. If just one species acts strangely, that could be just a local phenomenon momentarily affecting them, but when several separate species begin acting strangely at the same time, WE NEED TO PAY ATTENTION!
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