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Your daily bit of Alaskana
So, this afternoon, off and on, I’ve been hearing what sounds to me like a dog howling, somewhere in the neighborhood. But I can’t get a good fix on it, because I only ever heard it from inside the house, while I was doing something else. By the time I stopped to listen and open a window to see if I could hear it better, it had already stopped.
I kept trying to figure it out, because it’s really cold today (-20F or so) and I was worried that perhaps a neighbor dog had got caught in a trap or accidentally left outside or something. I couldn’t hear it well enough to tell for sure, though, and I wasn’t even 100% sure it was an animal, because sound carries a long way when it’s this cold, and I often mistake snowmobiles for animal sounds — their rising and falling pitch sounds animate, until I stop and listen and can tell for sure that it’s a snowmobile somewhere far off.
When I walked Lucky in the afternoon, I made a point of roaming around the edges of the property, hoping to hear the howling again (if it was howling) and get an idea of where it was coming from. At the edge of our driveway, I found the kind of tracks that I have, in the past, assumed are wolf tracks: enormous dog tracks (~5″ across) in a straight line, as wild canine tracks tend to be. In winters past, I’ve only ever found a single set, but this time I was pretty sure there were two different ones. But again, two of our neighbors have large dogs, and I wasn’t entirely sure it might not be them.
For some reason I didn’t put 2+2 together until I was out, again, with Lucky at dusk, and heard the howling again, and this time I heard it well enough to tell that it was two different howls responding to each other at different distances, catching and carrying on each other’s signal, as Huskies sometimes do. And then the penny dropped and I went “Oh!”
What I’ve been listening to all afternoon is wolf talk.
Of course, I could have done without having this epiphany at dusk, a quarter mile from the house. XD
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
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Now cougar, they creep me out. And bear, I don't trust to mind their own business at all, especially on garbage day.
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Bears ... yeah. For some reason we have very few of them around Fairbanks (despite being smack in the middle of Alaska); they just don't really come in this area. I've only seen tracks a couple of times. But I grew up in bear central, down along the Susitna River, where the salmon runs attract hundreds of bears. They are not good neighbors at all.
Ooo...
Though as you say, not so fun far from the house. I like listening to coyotes here in Illinois -- they get up quite a chorus -- but not when I'm outdoors.
Re: Ooo...
There were a lot of coyotes around where I grew up, and I would often hear their high-pitched singing at night. I never thought to be afraid of them. Possibly I was too busy being afraid of the bears ...
Re: Ooo...
So do I.
>> There were a lot of coyotes around where I grew up, and I would often hear their high-pitched singing at night. I never thought to be afraid of them. Possibly I was too busy being afraid of the bears ... <<
I'm not afraid of wildlife, but I regard certain species with respect. I decided to be cautious of multiple coyotes after reading about the "canis soup" effect. Outdoors is their territory; I don't want to invite trouble.
Re: Ooo...
My sister says that the coyotes that live around her area (she's in upstate New York) are coyote-wolf hybrids, and are bigger and meaner than standard coyotes, so she's very careful with them.
It's just interesting because I grew up around them and, while we were careful of the pets, I never thought of them as something that might pose a danger to an adult human. Thank you for the link!
Re: Ooo...
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