Monthly Archives: January 2013

When is a dog not a dog?

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Human visual perception is a funny thing. You can be absolutely certain that you see a particular thing, and unless  you look a little further you may never know how wrong you were.

On a recent walk with Zeke, I saw this.

Look into the woods

Look into the woods

Does that dark object slightly above mid-picture look like anything to you? For a few seconds I was convinced it was a dog sitting on its haunches. I couldn’t tell what kind it was, but I thought either a German shepherd or a doberman. Once my mind had made that identification, that’s what it looked like. I began to fill in details and the longer I looked, the more it looked like a dog.

Then I asked myself why a dog would be sitting out in the woods like that, calmly watching us approach, without a motion. So I went closer.

A log is not a dog

A log is not a dog

Up close it doesn’t look much like a dog.

Why would I have identified this as a dog? From a distance this object had the rough outline of a sitting dog. Even the coloring suggested a dog, although part of what I saw as coloring was actually the leaves behind it, seen through the gap between its “legs” and its “body.” It was considerably larger than a dog, but at that distance, the scale was not immediately obvious. Also, abandoned dogs are far from rare on our rural mountaintop. And, probably most important, my wife and I have been discussing the possibility of getting another doberman. So, wishful thinking?

Would you have seen a dog, or something else?

 

Friday felines

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The cats have been training for diving competitions. Since they don’t like water, they usually choose the bed. No, they don’t dive onto the bed, they practice while sleeping on the bed.

A perfect 10

A perfect 10

This is the closed pike position. Her form is quite good. I am not sure what the correct placement is for the tail, but this looks right. On the other hand, Zoe is a little sloppy.

A 6, to be generous

A 6, to be generous

This apparently was intended to be the pike in the open position, but it fails on multiple counts. Maybe sleeping on the sofa threw his timing off.

Zeus sneaks in

Zeus sneaks in

This is our late doberman, Zeus. For the purposes of this post, he has been made an honorary feline. I think he was actually practicing his cannonball.

Munching mushrooms

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I was browsing some old photos on my iPhone and ran into this one, taken last August. This turtle seemed to be happy chowing down on a mushroom.

Hard to make it out, but he's enjoying the 'shroom

Hard to make it out, but he’s enjoying the ‘shroom

He was actively eating and took no apparent notice of me.

Turtles are not common on Lavender Mountain, or at least I don’t see them very often. I have wondered how they navigate the steep slopes. I keep picturing a turtle stepping off an old road and rolling all the way down to the bottom of the mountain. Wayne, over at niches, keeps track of turtles he sees. I should be more organized. Soon.

Here’s another one I saw earlier.

Easy to lose this little fellow

Easy to lose this little fellow

It would have been easy to overlook this one, but he’s about as cute as a turtle can be, so I’m glad I didn’t.

Zeke and I (and Zeus before him) have four main paths through the woods, and two down Fouche Gap Road. We have walked a lot of miles over the last seven years and I have seen turtles only about five times, including once in our back yard and once as a bleached, white shell.  But they are quiet and slow moving, most of the time, so they are easy to miss.

A cloud’s tale

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Cirrus (from the Latin meaning a curl, a tuft, a filament) clouds are wispy, white high clouds that often precede a change in the weather. A fairly common feature is a drift of thinning cloud that fades to nothing. These are called mare’s tails, which is appropriate because they do look like the curl of a horse’s tail.

Mare's tail, or drifting, falling ice crystals

Mare’s tail, or drifting, falling ice crystals

These clouds just happened to be in the direction of the sun, so I had to place a light post over the sun to get a picture.

Cirrus clouds are composed of ice crystals, and those wispy tufts of the mare’s tail are ice crystals falling out of the cloud and sublimating as they drop into drier air. They are technically virga, which is precipitation that falls from a cloud and evaporates before it reaches the ground. I usually think of virga as liquid precipitation that evaporates before hitting the ground. If you watch the television weather, you might see a radar image showing rain over you, but when you look outside there’s no rain. That means there’s virga up there somewhere above you.

Cirrus clouds over the mountain

Cirrus clouds over the mountain

The mare’s tails can tell you the direction of the wind. It often also tells you that there is wind shear at altitude. If the mare’s tail is moving away from the cloud, then it must be falling into air that’s moving differently from where the cloud is. Wind shear can refer to a change in the velocity of the wind with altitude, or with the direction of wind with altitude. If there is any wind, there will be some wind shear close to the ground, because the surface of the Earth slows the wind. That’s why windmills work better when they are raised as high as possible. For large windmills, like some I have seen in the western US, there can be significant differences in wind speed from where the blades come closest to the ground to their highest point.

The physical forces at work also ensure that there will be some change in direction of the wind with altitude. Most of us have seen cloud layers that move across the sky in one direction while clouds that are higher move in a different direction. I like it best when it’s night and there’s a moon involved.

Fox news

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In mild weather our dog Zeke likes to hang out on the elevated walk leading to our front door. It’s built like a deck with a gate, so he can’t get out into the yard. In the spring of 2011, he started barking at something in the side yard (which would be the back yard if I had oriented the house differently). It got to be a regular occurrence in the evening as it was beginning to get dark. We eventually saw what it was.

I see you looking at me

I see you looking at me

The fox paid no attention to the barking, and very little attention to us when we came out to look.

I think it was a red fox, based on the coloration and the black stockings. I am a little uncertain about this since he’s not really all that red. He also doesn’t have a very prominent white tip to his tail. But it doesn’t much resemble pictures of the gray fox I have seen. I wasn’t aware that the red fox is an imported canid, brought over by the English, naturally. The gray fox is the native, but the red fox has moved into essentially all the same habitats.

We began to see the fox quite often. Once, early on, he seemed to be a little uncertain, so he hid. Or at least he thought he did.

This shrub is not quite big enough

This shrub is not quite big enough

This seems to be the same fox in the spring of 2012.

Spring 2012

Spring 2012

This fox (I assume it was always the same fox) was completely indifferent to our presence on the deck watching him. Once he actually lay down in the back yard, not far from the deck.

Let's take it easy for a while

Let’s take it easy for a while

And then he took a nap.

Nappy time

Nappy time

After a short time, he got up, pooped, and walked casually into the woods. I don’t know whether it was an editorial comment, but it convinced me that foxes and dogs share a similar sense of humor.

A breeding pair had a den somewhere nearby, probably across Wildlife Trail, which runs down the side of our lot. I heard and saw the fox on the road occasionally when I took Zeke for his final walk of the day. I saw the kits once, and a neighbor reported seeing them on Fouche Gap Road.

The fox had a regular route that he followed every evening up from the woods, across our driveway and then into a neighbor’s yard. I heard them in the woods occasionally, sounding a lot like a dog, but not really mistakable for a dog.

We loved seeing the fox. It seemed that we were witnessing a part of wild nature that is rare any more, even in our rural corner of northwest Georgia. But eventually we decided that it was not a good idea for the fox to think humans were harmless. It seemed not such a good idea for either human or fox. So I started throwing rocks at him when he came into the yard.

And now we don’t see them any more.