To keep the pastures from being overgrown with invasive plants, bushes and trees, we mow them every year. Now that so many of wildflowers are dying it will soon be time to brushhog them all.
So I walked among the tall flowers to see what has happening up close.
Grasshoppers jumped great distances from the stem of one plant to another. I counted seven bees on one stand of Joe Pye Weed, flies hummed, and spiders waited patiently in their webs. I saw one small Monarch Butterfly and a medium sized yellow butterfly whose name I don’t know.
Seeing all this activity helped me decide that we should wait a while longer before mowing the pastures.
On the way back to the barn I saw evidence of larger wildlife.
Zinnia alerted me to it when I saw her sniff then roll on the ground. She made sure to get the smell from the scat on her ear, as a person might dab perfume behind their ear.
I made her stop before she could eat it.
The scat was plentiful in three separate piles. It was unusual because it was speckled with a deep orange color. At first I thought it must be some kind of seed, but as I poked though it with a stick, I saw it was bits of shell.
I’ve seen crayfish in the pond. Once I even found the claw about two inches long. The scat was a foot or two from the edge of the pond and there was also a mark where urine had been sprayed. From the desciptions I’ve read of Bobcat Scat I believe that’s what I was looking at.
I’ve seen bobcat tracks in the snow on the Gulley Bridge and on the path in the woods. I’ve seen scat too. But it was the bits of crayfish shells that I found so interesting.
I imagine the Bobcat was marking its territory when it pooped so close to the pond. Perhaps it had come back to try and find another meal. I can’t help but wonder how it got the crayfish out of the pond.
