I was making the curve right before you hit the straight-away north of the Deep Fork River bottom Tuesday afternoon when - Whoa!
What is that heading across the road? A beaver?
It was beaverish, for sure, but it had a scruffy tail instead of the flat, rubbery kind that beavers usually prefer.
Or maybe it was a muskrat, out for an afternoon ramble.
An hour or so later, I was able to consult Google and determine that yonder creature was a woodchuck, no doubt headed to the river to chuck a little wood.
He was halfway across my lane when he detected the Stealth Chevy approaching.
I semi-swerved to the right about the same he decided to do a 180 and we came within about six inches of having roadkill woodchuck for supper.
I was glad he survived. This was the first woodchuck I ever saw in the flesh and, frankly, I was surprised when Google told me that they are seen on occasion in Central Oklahoma, including Lincoln County. I thought they lived in places like
I thought they lived in places like Pennsylvania, but now I know better.
I had a similar experience a few years with a gray fox. People would sometimes mention that they had seen foxes in Oklahoma, but I thought they probably had seen a coyote and upgraded it to a fox just to improve the story.
Then one misty night I encountered a gray fox trying to have one of my turkeys for supper. I left my shotgun in the house that night because of the dampness, so I had to watch with my flashlight as the fox climbed the fence and trotted off to the cedars.
Back when I was a kid, you never heard of foxes in rural Pontotoc County. Or deer, or wild turkeys. Certainly no bears or mountain lions.
I suppose over-farming had limited their habitat and they’d moved on, leaving the place to the bobcats, coons and coyotes.
My Grandma Solomon once told of a bear coming in their barn when she was playing in the hay loft with her younger brother and sister. This was in Murray County in the 1890s. One assumes it was black bear looking for a
One assumes it was black bear looking for a snack. Grandma waited until it wandered off, then waited a while before climbing down.
Those days were long gone by the time I was old enough to be aware.
I can remember how unusual it was to see a deer running across the highway in the 1950s and I specifically recall being an adult the first time I saw a wild turkey.
Now the bears, the deer, the turkeys, the woodchucks have all come back.
I just wish they hadn’t brought the wild hogs with them.